Publications
Validation of a blast pressure loading model for a shell-payload shock response model
A finite element (FE) model of a shell-payload structure is to be used to predict structural dynamic acceleration response to untestable blast environments. To understand the confidence level of these predictions, the model will be validated using test data from a blast tube experiment. The first step in validating the structural response is to validate the loading. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code, Saccara, was used to provide the blast tube pressure loading to the FE model. This paper describes the validation of the CFD pressure loading and its uncertainty quantification with respect to experimental pressure data obtained from geometrical mock-up structures instrumented with pressure gages in multiple nominal blast tube tests. A systematic validation approach was used from the uncertainty quantification group at Sandia National Labs. Significant effort was applied to distill the pressure loading to a small number of validation metrics important to obtaining valid final response which is in terms of acceleration shock response spectrum. Uncertainty in the pressure loading amplitude is quantified so that it can be applied to the validation blast tube test on the shell payload structure which has significant acceleration instrumentation but only a few pressure gages.