Abstract
When ships are sailing with large motions in rough waves, the slamming phenomenon occurs and the ships suffer from impulsive pressure loadings. Recently, ships are becoming lager and faster than before and it becomes more possible that the ships experience larger impacts on their bows and sterns. Many researchers have been performing the investigations on slamming experimentally and theoretically for a long time. Most of the research reported in the open literature focused on how to accurately estimate the amplitude of the peak pressure of slamming. According to the results of a recently published work, not only the amplitude of peak pressure but also the width of the peak may play an important role in predicting the extents of damage of impacted structures. The uncertainty of impulsive pressure loadings due to slamming has been indicated by many researchers. However, probabilistic treatments of the impulsive pressure loadings are few. In this study, drop tests were conducted on wedges having dead-rise angles of $0^{\circ}$ and $10^{\circ}$. Not only the amplitude of peak pressure but also the width of peak pressure were measured. Furthermore, the variations of those values are also provided for the probabilistic approach of the slamming problem.
