A Visual Model For Blast Waves and Fracture

The expense, danger, planning and precision required to create explosions suggests that the computational visual modelling of explosions is worthwhile. However, the short time scale at which explosions occur, and their sheer complexity, poses a difficult modelling challenge. After describing the basic phenomenology of explosion events, we present an efficient computational model of isotropic blast wave transport and an algorithm for fracturing objects in their wake. Our model is based on the notion of a blast curve that gives the force-loading profile of an explosive material on an object as a function of distance from the explosion’s centre. We also describe a technique for fracturing materials loaded by a blast. Our approach is based on the notion of rapid fracture: that microfractures in a material together with loading forces seed a fracturing process that quickly spreads across the material and causes it to fragment.