A numerical scheme for strong blast wave driven by explosion

Abstract

After the detonation of a solid high explosive, the material has extremely high pressure keeping the solid density and expands rapidly driving strong shock wave. In order to simulate this blast wave, a stable and accurate numerical scheme is required due to large density and pressure changes in time and space. The compressible fluid equations are solved by a fractional step procedure which consists of the advection phase and non-advection phase. The former employs the Rational function CIP scheme in order to preserve monotone signals, and the latter is solved by interpolated differential operator scheme for achieving the accurate calculation. The procedure is categorized into the fractionally stepped semi-Lagrangian. The accuracy of our scheme is confirmed by checking the one-dimensional plane shock tube problem with 103 times initial density and pressure jump in comparison with the analytic solution. The Sedov–Taylor blast wave problem is also examined in the two-dimensional cylindrical coordinate in order to check the spherical symmetry and the convergence rates. Two- and three-dimensional simulations for the blast waves from the explosion in the underground magazine are carried out. It is found that the numerical results show quantitatively good agreement with the experimental data. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.