An open benchmark to assess the effects of underwater explosions on steel panels using the volume of fluid approach

Despite the underwater explosion phenomena (UNDEX) have been studied for decades and several numerical methods have been proposed in literature, the simulation of the whole phenomenon in issue is even nowadays a matter of research. In this paper, a Volume of Fluid (VOF) approach, which allows the simulation of Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI), including the effects of seawater and vapor of cavitation on structures, is calibrated according to theory and experimental data. As a benchmark, a parallelepiped of fluid is built, verifying the effectiveness of the method with reference to some close-in explosions available in literature. In addition, VOF results are compared with the ones achieved from other researchers using the acoustic approximation. Strengths and limits of VOF coupling method are pointed out. In the end, the modelling strategy proposed and validated can be considered a suitable tool for the design of naval structures subject to underwater explosions.