Armament Research

Recent efforts in the target vulnerability community (fixed ground targets, mobile ground targets, and aircraft) have focused on enhancing the blast and fragmentation modeling from weapon detonations. This includes modeling propagation of the detonation effects from the weapon through their interaction with the target geometry, to the development of loads on and response of the target structure. Engineering algorithms have been developed for each of these areas and have been incorporated into the Modular Effectiveness and Vulnerability Assessment (MEVA) code. Unique methods for determining the interaction of the blast effects with the target model have been devised.Incorporation of target geometry effects with hydrodynamic calculations could thus be accomplished by enhancing the existing MEVA airblast algorithms to carry state variables and advect material from one volume to the next. Solution of the conservation equations on MEVA's unstructured grid cells would need to be added. The equations would require adaptation to the unstructured grid formulation, but this approach would allow automatic mesh generation and target geometry recognition based on the current MEVA target interrogation algorithms. Additionally, cells not in contact with the target geometry would not be removed because they would be needed to assess flow at later times. This approach would allow hydrocode calculations to be performed with target geometry at great savings, since mesh generation is currently the most labor intensive aspect of running hydrocodes. Utilizing the MEVA grid cells would greatly reduce the cost of setting up the calculations.