A survey of numerical methods for shock physics applications

Hydrocodes or more accurately, shock physics analysis packages, have been widely used in the US Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories and elsewhere around the world for over 30 years. Initial applications included weapons effects studies where the pressure levels were high enough to disregard the material strength, hence the term hydrocode. Over the last 30 years, Sandia has worked extensively to develop and apply advanced hydrocodes to armor/anti-armor interactions, warhead design, high explosive initiation, and nuclear weapon safety issues. The needs of the DOE have changed over the last 30 years, especially over the last decade. A much stronger emphasis is currently placed on the details of material deformation and high explosive initiation phenomena. The hydrocodes of 30 years ago have now evolved into sophisticated analysis tools that can replace testing in some situations and complement it in all situations. A brief history of the development of hydrocodes in the US will be given. The author also discusses and compares the four principal methods in use today for the solution of the conservation equations of mass, momentum, and energy for shock physics applications. The techniques discussed are the Eulerian methods currently employed by the Sandia multi-dimensional shock physics analysis packagemore » known as CTH; the element based Lagrangian method currently used by codes like DYNA; the element free Lagrangian method (also known as smooth particle hydrodynamics) used by codes like the Los Alamos code SPHINX; and the Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian methods used by codes like the Lawrence Livermore code CALE or the Sandia code ALEGRA.« less