Experiments and numerical methods are developed to investigate the water entry of a freefall wedge with a focus on the evolution of the pressure on the impact sides (the side contacting water) and the top side (the dry side on the top of the wedge), evolution of the global hydrodynamic loads, evolution of the air–water interface, and wedge motion. It is found that a typical water entry of a freefall wedge can be divided into slamming, transition, collapse and post-closure stages. A single-fluid numerical model is presented to simulate the first three stages. The results are compared to experiments and good agreements are obtained. A two-fluid BEM is proposed to investigate the influence of the air flow before the closure of the cavity created on the top of the wedge. It is found that for the closure of the 2D cavity, the air flow starts to play an important role just before closure but due to the short duration, the influence of air flow on the body velocity and configuration of the air–water interface is limited.
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