Modelling and simulation of explosions in soil interacting with deformable structures

Abstract

Abstract A detonating explosive interacting with a deformable structure is a highly transient and non-linear event. In field blast trials of military vehicles, a standard procedure is often followed in order to reduce the uncertainties and increase the quality of the test. If the explosive is buried in the ground, the state of the soil must meet specific demands. In the present work, laboratory experiments have been performed to characterize the behaviour of a soil material. Soil may be considered a three-phase medium, consisting of solid grains, water and air. Variations between the amounts of these phases affect the mechanical properties of the soil. The experimental outcome has formed input data to represent the soil behaviour included in a three-phase elastic-plastic cap model. This unified constitutive model for soil has been used for numerical simulations representing field blast trials, where the explosive load is interacting with a deformable structure. The blast trials included explosive buried at different depths in wet or dry sand. A dependence of the soil initial conditions can be shown, both in the past field trials along with the numerical simulations. Even though some deviations exist, the simulations showed in general acceptable agreement with the experimental results.