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The purpose of this paper is to improve knowledge of the water impact phenomenon from both the experimental and numerical points of view.

A drop test campaign on water was carried out on semi‐cylindrical steel structures. Therefore, an experimental database for validation purpose was generated. Subsequently, a finite element model was developed in LS‐DYNA in order to reproduce the tests. The behaviour of water was modeled by using the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) methods. Numerical simulations were compared to experimental data and the influence of some numerical parameters on the simulations was investigated.

The FE model was found to be able to reproduce the tests, at least in terms of acceleration peak and distribution of plastic deformation. Acceptable prediction was also found for the pressure peak in soft areas.

In case of low velocity impact, the water model was found to be too rigid and the acceleration peaks were over‐predicted by the simulations. Further investigations are needed to adjust the water model in order to obtain better results also in the case of low velocity impact.

The experimental database could be very useful to the crashworthiness community to validate their numerical models. Moreover, the present paper provides guidelines to modelling the water impact correctly.

The main objective of this work is to assess the current capabilities of different commercial finite element (FE) codes in simulating the progressive damage of composite structures under quasi-static loading condition in post-buckling regime.

Progressive failure analysis (PFA) methodologies, available in the investigated FE codes, were applied to a simple test case extracted from literature consisting in a holed composite plate loaded in compression.

Results of the simulations are significantly affected by the characteristic parameters needed to feed the degradation models implemented in each code. Such parameters, which often do not have a physical meaning, have to be necessarily set upon fitting activity with an experimental database at coupon level. Concerning the test case, all the codes were found able to capture the buckling load and the failure load with a good accuracy.

This paper would to give an insight into the PFA capabilities of different FE codes, providing the guidelines for setting the degradation model parameters which are of major interest.