Mitigation of Blast Injuries through Modeling and Simulation

Protection Engineering Consultants (PEC) will employ state-of-the-art numerical modeling and simulation (M&S) tools and techniques to assess the performance of armored tactical vehicles when subjected to land mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). PEC will identify the key technical issues, such as material models, human surrogate models, and explosive/soil interaction, and will develop and demonstrate successful approaches for each topic. These approaches will be combined into an overall modeling and analysis procedure that is demonstrated through application to a generic armored tactical vehicle subjected to a realistic explosive threat. The key metrics will be the predicted occupant injuries, overall vehicle response, and local deformations and motion. This procedure will be applied to actual vehicles in Phase II and the entire process will be transitioned to the Navy. The final product will allow the Navy and other DoD activities to successfully and reliably assess the effects of design changes that are proposed for reducing injuries and improving vehicle performance in land mine and IED attacks.