Fluid-structure interaction simulation of uneven geometries subjected to blast loading

Recently, improvised explosive devices have been widely used by terrorist or militant movements around the world. The blast wave propagation of an explosive detonation can cause destructive damage on the armored vehicles and also fatalities to the vehicle occupants. Field blast testing is very expensive and time consuming but by using computational based numerical simulations it is possible to virtually predict these blast wave propagation patterns. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is one of the effective tools to perform Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) analysis of free field air blast and against structure. This study presents two different blast analyses; free field air blast using CFD and blast loading subjected to the armored vehicle that focus on blast critical pressure point, front and hull sections using FSI method. Photogrammetry techniques were used to develop a three dimensional solid model of
armored vehicle sections (Front and hull) for the blast wave analysis. A high explosive of 72 g of plastic explosive (PE4) blast peak overpressure data from ConWep program has been patched at the specific fluid domain. The computed results for CFD and FSI were found to be in agreement with the experimental data. It was also found that the developed CFD model can be used to predict the blast wave propagation impact to armored vehicles.