Armor Panel Deformation Due to Simulated Land Mine Blast Testing and Simulation

Abstract

There are two important steps in modeling vehicle and occupant survivability due to blasts: the blast loading on the vehicle and the subsequent motion and deformation of the vehicle and occupants due to the load. At the last symposium, we presented our blast loading approach that was refined and extended during the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)’s Adaptive Vehicle Make (AVM) portfolio of programs. In this paper, we discuss the subsequent deformation of panels with and without stiffeners. To better understand blast and to validate the computational pipelines, SwRI performed blast tests on various panels made of rolled homogenous armor (RHA), aluminum, and magnesium. Quantities measured included imparted impulse to the fixture, maximum dynamic deformation, and maximum static deformation of the panels. The deformation data is presented here and includes comparisons to computations performed within the AVM computational framework.