Meso-scale Framework for Simulating the Response of Structural Reactive Materials to Shock Loading

Structural reactive materials (SRMs) or multifunctional energetic materials offer the ability to combine the high energy release rates of traditional high explosives with structural strength.When successfully formulated they can lead to light-weight, high-performance and hitherto inaccessible designs of munitions. The key feature of structural energetic materials (SEMs), perhaps even more so than conventional nitramine-binder type PBX formulations, is that the meso-scale dynamic interactions of SEMs under shock loading is crucial in determining their behavior. This work will employ a high-performance Eulerian sharp interface solver for high speed multimaterial interactions (SCIMITAR3D) to construct a framework for study of the multi-scale mechanics of SRMs. The computational delivered in the proposed project will be tested and applied to perform simulations of the macro-scale and meso-scale reactive dynamics of typical SRM mixtures (metal-metal systems) under a range of loading conditions and for varying mixture formulations. In addition, further aspects of modeling meso-scale energy localization mechanisms, such as particle-particle contact, friction, damage evolution, state-of-the-art reactive kinetics models will be incorporated in a portable, scalable large-scale simulation code. At the culmination of this project SCIMITAR3D will become a tool for multi-scale simulation of SRMs and useful for design of devices that employ SRMs.