Modeling of measured target pressure profiles in three hypervelocity impact experiments

A 24 g aluminum sphere was shot at a sparse array of cylinders with nominal initial projectile velocity of 4 and 5 km/s. Pressure profiles were measured with cased carbon resistor gages at two locations in a projectile impacted water filled cylinder and two of its neighbors on three shots. The pressure maxima were in the 1–13 kbars range. The experiments are modeled with the ALE3D code and several techniques are used to concentrate zoning at places of interest. There is excellent agreement between the measured and calculated pressure profiles for two shots and good agreement for the third. Comparison of the calculated pressure profiles with those from more refined calculations for two shots suggest that we are near convergence with respect to zone size.