WE-EXPERTH - Parallel Water Entry of Hydrophilic/Hydrophobic Projectiles: Experimental and Theroretical Aspects

The WE-EXPERTH project aims to study the parallel and simultaneous water entry (WE) of two spheres impacting on a water surface. The physics of WE and of parallel WE is important for a variety of engineering and natural science applications, such as underwater or navy vehicles, coating and spraying processes, marine platforms such as floating offshore wind turbine platforms, invasive free-surface flow measurement devices used in the steel industry, synchronized-diving athletes or plunge-diving birds. Scientific research in this area may lead to measures to reduce slamming loads on marine vessels and platforms, improve the accuracy of free-surface instrumentation, or even explain, why a diving bird does not get injured when it collides with water at high speed. Parallel WE is a highly nonlinear and unsteady process and has thus far not been addressed by research. Interactions are expected to influence air entrainment cavities and pinch-off (which can strongly affect the impact forces and the objects' kinetics) as well as splash curtains and jets (often undesired in engineering applications).