


the Concorde accident), and Defence (military aircraft, unmanned vehicle systems) aircraft industries. Here an impacting projectile transfers kinetic energy and momentum into the liquid, generating a shock wave that potentially ruptures the liquid containment 3. The design of fuel tanks with a reduced vulnerability with respect to hydrodynamic ram pressure (HRAM) effects is of an increasing need in the Civil (e.g. This results in the largest recorded pressure inside the simulator. Aside the structural damage, which might arise from bird impact, foreign object damage might also induce the so-called hydrodynamic RAM (HRAM) effect. This region of pressure decreases in the projectile wake, forming a trailing cavity that remains at a low pressure until the cavity begins to collapse. The angular distribution of the initial wave and the variation with distance were investigated along with the effect of projectile mass on the drag pressure. It was determined that a high-pressure initial wave is generated at impact and is followed by the more gradual drag pressure around the projectile.
#Hydrodynamic ram pressure effect simulator
Tungsten, steel, and aluminum spherical projectiles were fired into the tank and the result was measured using high-speed pressure transducers, which were located throughout the tank, and compared to the pressure waves and events recorded inside the tank simulator with a high-speed video. A generic box type fuel tank simulator was fabricated to study the phenomenon and was capable of containing 3785.4 l of liquid thereby isolating the phases of the event from tank wall reflections, and enable separation of the effects of each phase. An experimental study was made of the pressures generated by a single hydrodynamic ram event.
