Abstract

The bow seal system on surface-effect ships (SES) and other air-cushion vehicles (ACV) consists of a series of inclined open-ended fabric cylinders ("fingers") that contact the free surface and, when inflated, form a compliant pressure barrier. Bow seals are unique, in that unlike a majority of structures in civil and mechanical engineering, due to a constraint imposed by neighboring seals, bow seals operate in a post-buckled state. The response characteristics of these structures are of practical interest due to unacceptably high wear rates on seal components and the difficulties in predicting seal performance at the design stage. Despite this, the hydroelastic response of the seal system, particularly basic information on seal vibration modes and the physical mechanisms responsible for seal wear, remains largely unknown. Similarly, estimates of the hydrodynamic loads on the seal system are notoriously inaccurate and often based on heuristic scaling of small-scale test data. The utility of these small geosimilar experimental studies is limited as the system features a number of structural, aerodynamic and hydrodynamic scales making similitude impossible to maintain at small scale. A large-scale experimental approach is described which overcomes many of the scaling problems that have limited previous SES experimental studies, and enables the high-fidelity measurements required to characterize the complex response of bow seals. The experimental approach leverages recent advances in non-contact measurement techniques to acquire time resolved, high-resolution 3-d measurements of seal shapes. A unique force balance is used to acquire multi-component loads on a single finger seal in a seal system. Results from recent experiments conducted at the U.S. Navys Large Cavitation Channel are presented. The experiments show the hydroelastic response of bow seals to be characterized by striking stable and unstable post-buckling behavior. Based on detailed measurements of the seal shape, dominant response regimes are identified. These indicate that buckling mode number decreases with wetted length, and that the form of the buckling packet becomes localized with increased velocity and decreased bending stiffness. Eventually, at a critical pressure, outward travelling waves develop. To begin to interpret the wide range of observed behavior, a 2-dimensional nonlinear post-buckling model is developed and compared with the experimental studies. The model shows the importance of the shortening of the seal. A measure of seal compression, the shortening is found to be set by the wetted length and the wave rise induced by the pressurized air cushion. The model also suggests a natural length scale for the seal buckling problem which is driven by the balance of hydrodynamic and bending energies. Based on this model preliminary scaling laws for the fold amplitude and mode number are presented.