Abstract

We study the structural response of a stainless steel plate submitted to a combination of explosives blast and sand. We present a fully coupled approach in which a discrete particle method is used to compute the load due to the products of detonation of the explosive shocks both in air and sand. We
also use an advanced finite element method to predict the deformations of the plate. The particle method is based on discrete particles interacting via rigid collision forces. This method relies on a Lagrangian formulation and has many advantages over classical ALE approach.
The method was validated with experimental tests. The experiments were performed in different cases: explosive only, explosive contained in dry sand and explosive in saturated sand. The particle method developed is capable of describing the physical interactions between the explosives and soil particles leading to a realistic speed ejecta from sand. Good quantitative agreement is obtained between measured and predicted deformations of the different plates.