Design and optimization of multi-V hulls of light armoured vehicles under blast loads

Abstract

To mitigate the blast loads of mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) under a vehicle and reduce the injury of occupants, three hull shapes have been designed according to the bottom structure of a light armoured vehicle: double-V hull (DVH), triple-V hull (TVH), and trapezoidal hull (TH). The multimaterial arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (MM-ALE) algorithm was used to simulate vehicle bottom explosions. The simulation results show that DVH has the best load transfer path, rendering smaller occupant damage parameters with DVH installation and indicating that the best protection performance premised on meeting light weight requirements can be provided by DVH. Furthermore, multiobjective optimization of DVH has been carried out so that the protection performance can be further improved only by changing its dimension parameters. Compared with the performance of the original bottom structure of the vehicle, the optimized design of DVH could reduce the left and right lower tibia forces by 33.3% and 41.75%, respectively, and the mass decreased by 43.05%.