Numerical simulation of the natural fragmentation of explosively loaded thick walled cylinders

The ability to predict the natural fragmentation of an explosively loaded metal casing would represent a significant achievement. Physically-based material models permit the use of small scale laboratory tests to characterise and validate their parameters. The model can then be directly employed to understand and design the system of interest and identify the experiments required for validation of the predictions across a wide area of the performance space. This is fundamentally different to the use of phenomenologically based material algorithms which require a much wider range of characterisation and validation tests to be able to predict a reduced area of the performance space. Eulerians numerical simulation methods are used to describe the fragmentation of thick walled EN24 steel cylinders filled with PBXN-109 explosive. The methodology to characterise the constitutive response of the material using the physically based Armstrong–Zerilli constitutive model and the Goldthorpe path dependent fracture model is described, and the results are presented. The ability of an Eulerian hydrocode to describe the fragmentation process and reproduce the experimentally observed fragment mass and velocity distributions is presented and discussed. Finally the suitability of the current experimental analysis methodology for simulation validation is addressed.