Numerical Modeling of Air Cushion Vehicle Flexible Fingers

The goal of this research is to numerically model flexible finger seals of an air cushion vehicle (ACV) to more accurately predict resistance for these craft. Advancements in computational tools for fluid-structure interactions have set the stage for this effort. Prior work for this application has focused on planer type seals and not the finger type seals typical of modern ACVs. While this research effort remains underway and limited results are available, it is the authors’ desire to propose a pathway forward. Following the motivation and a brief review of prior work, verification of Abaqus/Explicit’s fluid solver is conducted using the analytical solution to Couette flow. Next, Abaqus/Standard (implicit scheme) is used to verify the finite element options for the structural portion. Various hyper elastic material models are also compared. Lastly, a FSI validation problem is conducted using Abaqus/Explicit for both linear elastic and hyper elastic materials.