LS-DYNA R9.

0 – 05 Shock and Blast

Daniel Hilding
LS-DYNA for defense - Applications
■ Homeland security – blast loads on buildings & infrastructure
■ Mine and IED (Improvised Explosive Device) blasts on vehicles and transported
personnel.
■ Penetration mechanics
■ Warhead performance
■ Explosively formed projectiles and shaped charges
■ Munitions & guns/barrels
■ Submarine and surface vessels underwater shock analysis using the USA Code
(requires special license)

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Empirical/phenomenological models for explosive loads
■ *LOAD_BLAST(_ENHANCED) – Air blast loads from conventional explosives.
■ *LOAD_BRODE – Pressure loads from explosions at (higher) altitudes.
■ *INITIAL_IMPULSE_MINE – Loads from buried mines on vehicles.
■ *LOAD_SSA - Submarine shock analysis (loads from
underwater explosions).
■ Summary:
■ Short run-times and very easy to use.
■ Documented accuracy for the situations for which the
model was calibrated.
■ Correlates will with methods used in standard handbooks,
e.g. TM 5-1300.
■ Not a general solution method. Reasonable results only for
situations (simple geometry, charge type et c) for which the
method was developed. Figure from T. Slavik & L. Schwer, ”Buried charge engineering model:
verification and validation”, 9th European LS-DYNA conf.
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“First principle” physics based methods for explosive load calculation
■ Solvers
■ Multi-Material ALE (Euler formulation)
■ Particle blast (*PARTICLE_BLAST) – CPM - Corpuscular Particle Method
■ SPH – Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics
■ CE/SE including Chemistry module and support for hybrid solution with
*LOAD_BLAST_ENHANCED
■ Summary:
■ In principle capable of modelling any situation, it is like virtual testing.
■ Can yield a deep insight into physics of the situation being simulated, which often not
even physical testing can provide.
■ Requires the user to develop his own modeling guidelines (meshing, numerical
parameters) and also verify the accuracy of the results when using these guidelines.
■ Can require large computational resources.

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LS-DYNA R9.0 – News with respect to blast
■ MM-ALE *CONTROL_ALE
■ *ALE_STRUCTURED_MESH - New structured ALE solver - faster, more memory efficient, and
easier to set up.
■ 2D ALE - Now support also smoothing (AFAC, …, DFAC).
■ Hybrid analysis with ALE and *LOAD_BLAST_ENHANCED – Improved performance.
■ *INITIAL_EOS_ALE – Initialize internal energy, density et c.
■ New output format for ALE interface force file, labels are now shown for components in LS-
PrePost.
■ Particle Blast solver *PARTICLE_BLAST
■ Available since R8.0 it is continuously being developed with respect to performance and
robustness with each release.
■ New commands *DEFINE_PBLAST_AIRGEO and *DEFINE_PBLAST_HEGEO to define geometry of
air and explosives.
■ CE/SE Compressible CFD solver (see the LS-DYNA multi-physics solver manual)
■ The immersed boundary FSI method coupled with the chemistry solver is released
■ 2D and 3D Euler solvers can now be used with full chemistry and CESE FSI Immersed Boundary Method.
■ Applications: high speed combustion problems such as explosion, detonation shock interacting with
structures.

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LS-DYNA - Scenarios and solution methods for air blast and mines
■ Pick the right tool for the job. Also consider the know-how required to use it.
Classifi- Scaled MM-ALE/S-ALE SPH *PARTICE_ CE/SE *LOAD_BLAST(_EN *INITIAL_I
cation distance Z BLAST HANCED) MPULSE_MI
m/kg(1/3) NE

Far field >4-40 Yes* Yes* Yes

Medium 0.4-4 Yes or Yes* Maybe Yes* Yes
field
Near field ~0.053-0.4 Yes Yes? Yes Yes** Yes (border case)
Contact ~0.0531 Yes Yes Yes Yes**
Buried ~0.053 - ~1 Yes Yes Yes*** Yes
mine &
vehicle
Yes* = If using hybrid with *LOAD_BLAST_ENHANCED (or mapping method is also available for ALE).
Yes** = Possible if using the built in chemistry solver.
Yes*** = When coupling particle blast solver to the discrete element solver to represent sand/soil.
To date there is little experience on exactly how to model soil/sand using DEM for mine blast.
LS-DYNA R9.0 – 05 Shock and Blast 6
2 Particle blast – Close range blast and mine blast analysis
■ Based on the theory of statistical gas
kinetics, i.e. molecular simulation.
■ Very easy to set up and use.
■ Short run times, order(s) of magnitude
compared to ALE. ”Minutes vs hours”.
■ A recent method – thus lack of
experience with advantages and
limitations.

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2 Particle Blast – Land mine simulations

Air particle
(Ideal Gas Law)

Discrete Element
Method (DEM)

HE Particle Source: LSTC presentation

Real Gas Law)
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2 Particle Blast – Land mine simulations

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2 Particle Blast – Land mine simulations

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2 Simulation results - Convergence rate
■ Results from a study by Hailong Teng, LSTC, is shown below

Experimental result
47 mm

The peak deflection in the experiments has been estimated as 47mm

(Neuberger et al. 2009)

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Simulation results – Cylinder test
■ Ref.: "Cylinder Test on C-4", UCRL-TR-230845, LLNL, P. C. Souers, 2007
■ Cylinder test set up
Cylinder Expl. Approx Detvel Inner Wall
Explosive Shot Density Cylinder Diam Diameter Thickness Shot
Name No. (g/cc) Material inches (mm/μs) (mm) (mm) Date
COMP C-4 289 1,601 Cu 1 8,193 25,43 2,593 740314

■ Example model: CylinderTest

■ Simulation
■ 1e6 particles, default C-4 parameters.
■ LS-DYNA: SMP version R9, double prec. (double prec. probably not needed)
■ Tube length 300 mm
■ 1 layer of ELFORM=1 solid elements
■ OHFC material model – Grüneisen EOS &
Zirelli-Armstrong yield model

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Cylinder test
■ Cylinder test – Often used to determine explosive material EOS
■ Images below from Jacksson, S. I., ” Scaled Cylinder Test Experiments with Insensitive PBX
9502 Explosive“, Los Alamos National Laboratory, LA-UR-14-24823, 2014.
■ Velocity & expansion often measured about 1/3 from tube ignition end.
■ Classical fitting function for wall radial expansion

Test rig, 1 in. tube, 2x2 Photon Doppler Velocimetry sensors. High speed photos of the event.

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Simulation results – Cylinder test
■ Comparison between test and simulation
■ Simulation data from cross section 100 mm (=1/3) from beginning of tube.

COMP C-4, CYLINDER TEST DATA COMP C-4, CYLINDER TEST DATA
Test data Simulation (100 mm from pipe ignition end) Log. (Test data )
Test data Data fit Simulation (100 mm from pipe ignition end) y = 0,2231ln(x) + 0,9798
1,8
40 1,7
1,6
35
RADIAL EXPANSION (MM)

1,5

VELOCITY (MM/US)
30 1,4
25 1,3
1,2
20 1,1
15 1
0,9
10 0,8
5 0,7
0,6
0 0,5
-5 0 5 10 15 20 25 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25
TIME (US) TIME (US)

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LS-DYNA R9.0 – 06 Particle/Meshfree methods

Daniel Hilding

LS-DYNA R9.0 - 06 Particle/Meshfree methods 15

LS-DYNA particle / meshless method developments
■ LSTC is actively pursuing various advanced meshless/particle methods for
applications for which traditional methods (FEM, SPH, ALE) do not work well.
■ Applications
■ Fracture of brittle materials, e.g. impacts on glass, including laminated glass
■ Simulation of very large deformations, typically manufacturing processes such as self
piercing rivets, forging, extrusion, friction stir welding, forging, cuting, blanking, and
turning.
■ Fracture of metals
■ Penetration mechanics
■ Granular materials
■ Rubbers subject to very large deformations

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Example – Flow Drill Screw and pullout simulation using SPG
Constant v Stage I Stage II

Rigid

Solid plates (SPG)

Constant v

v decreases by x10
Rotational speed increases by x4

Start unscrewing
Rotation creates material vertical transportation in the direction
opposite to the prescribed v

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LS-DYNA particle / meshless method available i R9.0
■ Discrete Element Sphere (DES a.k.a. DEM) – Granular materials –
*CONTROL_DISCRETE_ELEMENT
■ Meshless Local Petrov-Galerkin – *DEFINE_DE_HBOND, HBOND=2
■ EFG – Element Free Galerkin – *SECTION_SOLID_EFG, ELFORM=41,42,
SECTION_SHELL_EFG, ELFORM=41,42.
■ EFG supports adaptivity (shell) & remeshing (3D solids).
■ ME-FEM - Meshfree Enriched FEM - *SECTION_SOLID, ELFORM=43 (for rubbers)
■ SPG - Smoothed Particle Galerkin - *SECTION_SOLID_SPG (very large
deformations of metals, fracture)
■ XFEM – eXtended FEM – SECTION_SHELL ELFORM=52, 54

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DEM/DES Applications
■ Mills, dumpers, embankements, landscaping, mining, et c.

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DEM/DES – Robust interaction with solids and shells

dry sand wet sand Wet concrete

Courtesy Kirk Fraser (Predictive Engineering)

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DEM/DES
■ Good parallel scalability using MPP/LS-DYNA

Courtesy Kirk Fraser (Predictive Engineering)

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DEM/DES – calculation of wear & conveyor boundary condition

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DEM – New Features in R9.0
■ Archard's wear law to *DEFINE_DE_TO_SURFACE_COUPLING, improved postprocessing.
■ *BOUNDARY_DE_NON_REFLECTING
■ Non-reflecting boundary conditions for DES particles
■ Postprocessing features
■ d3plot
■ Nodal stress, force, pressure
■ Density
■ Force chain
■ *DATABASE_DEMASSFLOW
■ Calculate mass flow through a surface (file demflow)
■ Improved *DATABASE_TRACER_DE – tracers
■ Coordination number
■ Porosity and void ratio
■ Stress & Pressure
■ Density

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