PI: Scott Bardenhagen
The Unitah code was used to simulate energetic material formulations used in explosive penetrators or "bunker busters". It is well established that the heterogeneity of energetic materials at the mesoscale localizes deformation energy, generating "hot spots". It is imperative to understand the nature of hot spot spatial distributions, as their coalescence leads to sustainable reaction. Given the difficulties in determining hot spot distributions experimentally, this is an ideal scenario for contributions via numerical simulation. Simulations were used to elicit mesomechanical explanations for existing experimental results and suggest improved formulations. Although this project is complete, a follow-on proposal for additional work (SBIR Phase II) was requested by AFRL.