Topics in Computational Modeling of Shock and Wave Propagation

Motivated by recent efforts to mitigate blast loading using energy-absorbing materials, this paper investigates the uniaxial crushing of cellular media in sandwich construction under impulsive pressure loading. The cellular core is modeled using a rigid, perfectly-plastic, locking idealization, as in previous studies, and the front and back faces are modeled as rigid, with pressure loading applied to the front face and the back face unrestrained. Predictions of this analytical model show excellent agreement with explicit finite element computations, and the model is used to investigate the influence of the mass distribution between the core and the faces. Increasing the mass fraction in the front face is found to increase the impulse required for complete crushing of the cellular core but also to produce undesirable increases in back-face accelerations. Optimal mass distributions are investigated by maximizing the impulse capacity while limiting the back-face accelerations to a specified level.