Full-field reconstruction of water slamming pressures

Wave loading can lead to severe damage in offshore structures exposed to extreme weather conditions. Predicting the underlying loading conditions is crucial for designing such structures to provide the necessary resilience and protective capabilities for long term operation.

Most current studies focus on either global or point-wise load measurement, which does not yield sufficient information on local loading effects such as dynamic peak pressure loads.

The present study demonstrates the applicability of a time-resolved, full-field surface pressure reconstruction approach for measuring dynamic pressure distributions during water impact on plated structures.

Deflectometry measurements allowed measuring surface deformations on a flat, thin steel plate that was integrated into a scaled-down pillar of an offshore structure. Pressure information was reconstructed in full-field and time-resolved using the virtual fields method.

Full-field pressure maps were obtained for several different impacts, allowing insights into the wave dynamics and quantifying the induced loads within the region of interest. Results were found to agree qualitatively well with data from force panel tests.