Numerical Modeling of High Velocity Impact in Non-Metallic Materials

Materials and structures subjected to fast, transient loading (e.g. vehicular impacts, blast and impact loading of structures, the response of containment structures to internal and external stimuli, among others) share several common features which makes them tractable by a set of numerical tools frequently referred to as wave propagation codes or hydrocodes. The successful simulation of such phenomena requires adequate spatial resolution, a constitutive model which incorporates the features observed experimentally and data for the constitutive model appropriate to the range of strain rates encountered in reality. This paper focuses on the available constitutive models for material deformation under high rate loading as well as sources of high rate data. It is found that for metallic materials, adequate models and data exist to model large deformation effects quite accurately for diverse applications. However, failure models range from inadequate to impractical and the available data for existing models is very limited. For non-metallic materials, both definitive computational models and an adequate data base for high rate loading simulations are lacking. Much of the current work in this area relies on ad hoc models, some of which lack a firm physical foundation.