PROGRESSIVE CRUSHING ANALYSIS OF ALUMINIUM HIGH SPEED CRAFTS WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO BOW COLLISIONS: NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION

This work is the first report on an on-going project by authors towards investigation of the crushing behaviour of high speed crafts. The focus lies on the bow collision of the craft to a rigid structure. Although the final aim of the project is to explore crushing characteristics of the high speed craft made in composite materials, the current work addresses aluminium crafts. The explicit FE code LS-DYNA is used to simulate the crushing and collapse mechanisms. Some of the available tests are simulated first. Then the crushing mechanisms are obtained for a variety of travelling speeds as well as the angle of head-on collision of the aluminium craft.