Lightweight Structures Roadside Blast Protection

The key technical objective of the Phase I effort will be the successful development of lightweight compact structures that can be applied to vehicles, either as add-on structures or as an integral part of the vehicle. This will be accomplished through analysis, simulation, practical experience, intuition and experimentation, with the aid of artificial intelligence, primarily in the form of genetic algorithms, to help refine the concepts. The general approach will be to develop blast protection materials and structures that defocus and redirect the blast impulse so that the negative effects on the vehicle passengers and the vehicle itself are minimized. In order to examine and refine the concepts, we plan to perform dynamic simulations, coupled with genetic algorithms. The simulations will have both numeric and graphical animation outputs. To validate the simulations, lab tests and field tests will be conducted.