Development of Blast Event Simulation

The design of Army vehicles to resist blast from mines or from explosive devices is of great interest in order to provide protection to the vehicle and its occupants. Full size mine blast tests are expensive and time consuming. Using a numerical simulation for predicting the interaction of the mine blast with the vehicle can minimize the testing, and identify design changes for increased occupant safety. In the proposed Phase II project the overall objective is to create a system level integration software product (Blast Event Simulation sysTem, BEST) which will seamlessly integrate Eulerian and Lagrangian solvers along with an occupant safety code through a user friendly interface. Wizard menus will guide a user in setting up the analyses and “know-how” will be built into the BEST. The modeling capabilities will be expanded to generate the Eulerian mesh, incorporate effects of uncertainty in the simulations, enhance the capabilities for soil modeling, and include some representative vehicle models for baseline simulations. A new optimization capability for vehicle design based on occupant safety metrics will also be developed. Further validation will be performed through comparison to test data for complex configurations. Comprehensive new testing will be performed under this project. A commercially viable package will be created for the engineering community of blast simulations and human safety. The integration approach established in the Phase I effort was validated through comparison to test data from two different configurations. The proposed approach is in-line with existing modeling efforts in the Army, and the Phase II work will provide an opportunity to create commercial software compatible to the current simulation practices in the US Army.