Microstructural damage and response of stiffened composite submersible pressure hull subjected to underwater explosion

Abstract

ABSTRACT Submerged structures in naval applications are susceptible to underwater explosion and predicting the transient response and damage is a prime concern for the designer. Coupled Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) based numerical investigation using LS-DYNA for the inelastic dynamic response and microstructure failures of composite hull subjected to UNDEX is presented. As a prelude to the study, shock pressure in fluid domain and strain values obtained on the composite pressure hull is compared with that available in literature. The numerical study is extended to predict the large deformation, puncture and microstructural behaviours of the hull by varying the charge weight of the explosive. The results of the predicted large deformation, puncture of the hull and the microstructural failures such as fibre tension, fibre compression, matrix shear, matrix tension, and matrix compression based on the Chang- Chang composite failure model, Tsai-Wu failure theory and maximum stress theory are presented.