Verification of a theoretical model of tensor skin under water impact by considering the fluid–structure interaction

• A fluid–structure interaction model of tensor skin impinging water is established by FEM.
• The interaction pressure is found to be varying with plate configuration.
• Energy absorbing capacities of sandwich plate and tensor skin are superior to solid plate.
• The theoretical model and pulse approximation method are validated by FE simulations.

Tensor skin is a kind of composite sandwich structure developed to improve the helicopter's crashworthiness when it impacts with water. In our previous theoretical studies, by employing the rigid, perfectly plastic idealization and the pulse approximation method, the static and dynamic responses of tensor skin under uniform pressure loading were obtained.In this study, a fluid–structure interaction simulation model of tensor skin impinging with water is established by FE method, in order to verify the previous theoretical analyses. It is found that the interaction pressure between the skin plate and water varies with the configuration of the plate. Compared with a solid plate, the pulses generated by a honeycomb-core sandwich plate and a tensor skin are more moderate. By studying the effect of water depth, the theoretical predictions of the tensor skin, as developed in our previous papers, are found valid for the deep water case. From the comparison among the theoretical predictions, pulse loading FE model, and the fluid–structure interaction FE model, the deviation of the theoretical prediction in the final deflection is found to be about 10% compared with that obtained from the fluid–structure interaction FE model. Thereby, the theoretical model and the pulse approximation method are confirmed to have sufficient accuracy for the design of tensor skins.