Inelastic response of thin aluminium plates exposed to blast loading

This study uses experimental data to validate the finite element code EUROPLEXUS in predicting the inelastic response of thin aluminium plates exposed to blast loading. The loading was generated by detonating spherical charges of plastic explosives at various stand-off distances relative to the centre of the square plates. The plates had an exposed area of m2, and the experimental tests covered the entire range of structural response from complete failure at the support to a more counter-intuitive behaviour where the permanent mid-point deflection was in the opposite direction to the incident blast wave due to reversed snap buckling. The numerical results were in good agreement with the experimental data, and were able to predict the inelastic response, partial and complete tearing at the support, and the reversed snap buckling. In particular, the partial and complete failure along the boundaries were successfully recreated in the numerical simulations by using adaptive mesh refinement and element erosion. The mesh refinement was driven by the damage parameter in the material model and occurred at user-defined levels of this parameter.

AUNE Vegard;  VALSAMOS Georgios;  CASADEI Folco;  LARCHER Martin;  LANGSETH M.;  BORVIK T.; 

2016-11-22

Politecnico di Torino

JRC101776