Effect of Fragmenting Buried High Explosive Projectile (152MM HE FRAG OF-540) on Military Ground Vehicles

Abstract

Simulation of Military ground vehicles subjected to buried landmines, and Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) has been carried out by many researchers, and military establishments to understand the effects in detail. But the ability to predict the effects of fragmenting IED’s on military ground vehicles is little known in simulation community. Hydrocode simulation such as Eulerian simulation and Arbitrary Lagrange in Eulerian (ALE) simulation coupled to vehicle structure is widely used methodology to characterize buried detonating IED. But for fragmenting IED’s capturing the fragmentation and fragmenting elements are necessary and ALE may not be able to capture it. There are several statistical and empirical formulations that are available to approximately estimate the number of fragments, but does not provide sufficient information about the velocities of the fragments. In this proposed study, a 152mm High Explosive (HE) OF-540 fragmenting projectile was modelled in detail per geometry and buried 100 mm deep inside the soil. This fragmenting projectile was coupled to U.S. Army’s Ground Vehicle System Center (GVSC) developed generic hull (GH) structure to understand the impact effects of fragmenting fragments. Three different analysis were carried out Projectile buried in soil with adaptive SPH projectile casing, Projectile buried in soil coupled to GH structure with projectile casing as ALE and projectile casing as adaptive SPH methods. Results from all the three analysis were thoroughly analyzed and findings from these analysis is presented in this paper. Solid element formulation is well suited for shock waves, crack propagation and fragmentation problems was used in modeling all the structural and projectile components using commercially available structural code LS-DYNA-3D.