A systematic review on dynamic responses of marine structures under repeated mass impacts

Repeated mass impact loadings often occur in the marine engineering field, such as ship collisions, aircraft landing impacts, ice impacts, and some falling object impacts. For metal structure components subjected to repeated mass impacts, a great deal of experimental, numerical and theoretical studies has been conducted in the past thirty years. This paper has reviewed and summarized the mechanical mechanisms of structures under repeated mass impacts, especially for repeated rigid mass impacts and repeated ice impacts. Besides, some significant influencing factors on structural responses under repeated mass impacts are discussed, such as indenter types, material elasticity, strain hardening effect and low temperature. Furthermore, with the development of new composite material technology, several novel composite structures applied for resisting repeated mass impacts are introduced in the paper. The accumulated damage mechanisms and energy absorption characteristics of these composite structures are reviewed. The review of this paper can contribute to the protective structure design in resisting repeated mass impact loadings.