skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: An Eulerian multimaterial framework for simulating high-explosive aquarium tests

Journal Article · · Computers and Fluids

Aquarium tests of cylindrical high-explosive charges provide optical data of the detonation front velocity and shape, propagation of the shock wave in the surrounding water, and expansion rates of the detonation products behind the front. Data from aquarium experiments is often used for calibration of reactive burn models based on phenomenological equations of state (EOS) and reaction rate laws. This paper presents a multimaterial numerical modeling framework to solve the 2D axisymmetric reactive Euler equations for high-explosive aquarium tests, in particular for ammonium nitrate - fuel oil (ANFO) explosives. An extension of the Ghost Fluid Method (GFM) is used to handle the dynamic material interfaces for the ANFO explosion products, the charge-confining material (polymethyl methacrylate PMMA), and the surrounding water. This study analyzes the sensitivity of calculations (both computational efficiency and numerical accuracy) to different algorithms for the material interface models including the original GFM versus Riemann solver-based strategies. A novel method for defining the left and right states in the interfacial Riemann problem eliminates the need for sorting or nodal interpolation during the projection along the material interface. Numerical tests indicate that populating the interface node values using the Riemann solution mitigate the overheating error observed in steady-state calculations. Solution convergence and computational efficiency are explored as a function of the spatial and temporal order of the schemes. Results from the computational model with analytical equations of state and fitted reaction rate parameters show very good quantitative agreement with experimentally observed detonation front velocity, reaction products expansion, and shock wave propagation in the surrounding water for a cylindrical ANFO charge encased in PMMA. Finally, the proposed modeling framework, in conjunction with experimental tests, provides a reliable tool to assess equations of state and reaction rate expressions for reactive burn models of confined high explosives.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
Grant/Contract Number:
89233218CNA000001
OSTI ID:
1623433
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1776276
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-20-22401
Journal Information:
Computers and Fluids, Vol. 205, Issue C; ISSN 0045-7930
Publisher:
ElsevierCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 1 work
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

References (39)

The dependence of Ammonium-Nitrate Fuel-Oil (ANFO) detonation on confinement journal January 2017
High Explosive Detonation–Confiner Interactions journal January 2018
Steady Non-ideal Detonations in Cylindrical Sticks of Explosives journal September 2005
Performance Properties of Commercial Explosives journal February 1983
On the direct construction of the steady traveling solution to high explosive sandwich, cylinder and aquarium tests via a streamline finite volume approximation journal October 2019
A Non-oscillatory Eulerian Approach to Interfaces in Multimaterial Flows (the Ghost Fluid Method) journal July 1999
A Level-Set Algorithm for Tracking Discontinuities in Hyperbolic Conservation Laws journal March 2001
Ghost fluid method for strong shock impacting on material interface journal September 2003
A Real Ghost Fluid Method for the Simulation of Multimedium Compressible Flow journal January 2006
Equation of State of Detonation Products Based on Exponential‐6 Potential Model and Analytical Representation of the Excess Helmholtz Free Energy journal March 2019
Stability of Chapman–Jouguet detonations for a stiffened-gas model of condensed-phase explosives journal March 2006
JWL++: A Simple Reactive Flow Code Package for Detonation journal April 2000
Numerical modelling of underwater detonation of non-ideal condensed-phase explosives journal January 2015
The Compressibility of Media under Extreme Pressures journal September 1944
Spherical Solutions of an Underwater Explosion Bubble journal January 1998
Underwater Explosions journal October 1948
Shock waves in water journal July 1988
High resolution numerical simulation of ideal and non-ideal compressible reacting flows with embedded internal boundaries journal January 1997
Convex ENO High Order Multi-dimensional Schemes without Field by Field Decomposition or Staggered Grids journal May 1998
An improved weighted essentially non-oscillatory scheme for hyperbolic conservation laws journal March 2008
An approximate linearised riemann solver for the Euler equations for real gases journal February 1988
Inviscid flux-splitting algorithms for real gases with non-equilibrium chemistry journal October 1990
Positivity-preserving method for high-order conservative schemes solving compressible Euler equations journal June 2013
Reaction-zone structure of a steady-state detonation wave in a cylindrical charge journal April 1997
Multiple interacting liquids journal July 2006
Motion of Multiple Junctions: A Level Set Approach journal June 1994
A multiple level set method for modeling grain boundary evolution of polycrystalline materials journal June 2008
A fast marching level set method for monotonically advancing fronts. journal February 1996
A partial differential equation approach to multidimensional extrapolation journal January 2004
A static PDE Approach for MultiDimensional Extrapolation Using Fast Sweeping Methods journal January 2014
A fast sweeping method for Eikonal equations journal May 2004
Convergence analysis of the fast sweeping method for static convex Hamilton–Jacobi equations journal December 2016
An Isobaric Fix for the Overheating Problem in Multimaterial Compressible Flows journal January 1999
A ghost fluid method for compressible reacting flows with phase change journal February 2013
Efficient Characteristic Projection in Upwind Difference Schemes for Hyperbolic Systems journal March 1998
Multi-phase simulation of ammonium nitrate emulsion detonations journal September 2013
Numerical resolution of pulsating detonation waves journal September 2000
Characteristic path analysis of confinement influence on steady two-dimensional detonation propagation journal January 2019
Analysis of algorithms for velocity estimation from discrete position versus time data journal January 1992

Similar Records

Calculated shock pressures in the aquarium test
Conference · Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 1981 · OSTI ID:1623433

High-order shock-fitted detonation propagation in high explosives
Journal Article · Thu Dec 01 00:00:00 EST 2016 · Journal of Computational Physics · OSTI ID:1623433

Numerical simulations of the Los Alamos gapstick experiment
Journal Article · Tue Sep 26 00:00:00 EDT 2023 · AIP Conference Proceedings · OSTI ID:1623433