Experimental and finite element analysis of human injury prediction subjected to underbelly blast loading

One of the lethal threats faced by an armoured vehicle comes from the explosion of a land mine. The blast wave from the explosion propagates to the vehicle structure, floor, seats and eventually to the occupants inside the vehicle. If the blast waves are not dissipated properly, it could bring harm to the occupants. In this study, the occupant response during mine blast was investigated using experimental test and numerical simulation. A mine blast capsule was fabricated and an instrumented dummy was utilized for the experiment. The numerical simulation was developed using LS-DYNA software. The finite element model was also optimized using LS-OPT so that comparable results from the experiment can be produced by the simulation. Next, the simulation was validated using CORA rating tools. CORA software rates the comparison of simulation and experimental results and produces rating numbers that indicate the feasibility of the simulation. The total CORA rating of the simulation yields a value of 0.577, which means that the simulation model is able to produce realistic results based on CORA analysis. After the validation process, LS-OPT were utilized once again to develop the meta-model of the injury probability against the mine charge weight. Three injury probability curves against charge weight were produced. The three curves were the head, DRI and tibia injury probability. The average mean absolute percentage error of the three curves produces a value of 30.71% error. The error value produces are common in mine blast field which indicates that more research needs to be done to improve its situation. Nonetheless, the meta-model produced is capable of simplifying the relationship between the injury probability against the land mine charge weights.