Simulation of underwater explosion benchmark experiments with ALE3D

Some code improvements have been made during the course of this study. One immediately obvious need was for more flexibility in the constitutive representation for materials in shell elements. To remedy this situation, a model with a tabular representation of stress versus strain and rate dependent effects was implemented. This was required in order to obtain reasonable results in the IED cylinder simulation. Another deficiency was in the ability to extract and plot variables associated with shell elements. The pipe whip analysis required the development of a scheme to tally and plot time dependent shell quantities such as stresses and strains. This capability had previously existed only for solid elements. Work was initiated to provide the same range of plotting capability for structural elements that exist with the DYNA3D/TAURUS tools. One of the characteristics of these problems is the disparity in zoning required in the vicinity of the charge and bubble compared to that needed in the far field. This disparity can cause the equipotential relaxation logic to provide a less than optimal solution. Various approaches were utilized to bias the relaxation to obtain more optimal meshing during relaxation. Extensions of these techniques have been developed to provide more powerful options, but more work still needs to be done. The results presented here are representative of what can be produced with an ALE code structured like ALE3D. They are not necessarily the best results that could have been obtained. More experience in assessing sensitivities to meshing and boundary conditions would be very useful. A number of code deficiencies discovered in the course of this work have been corrected and are available for any future investigations.