In the past decade, there has been an increasing demand from governments for high level protections for military vehicles against explosives. However, the design and validation of protection is a time consuming and expensive process, where previous experience plays an important role. Development time and weight are the driving factors, where the weight influences vehicle performance. Numerical simulations are used as a tool in the design process, in order to reduce development time and successively improve the protection. The explosive load acting on a structure is sometimes described with analytical functions, with limitations to shape and type of the explosive, confinement conditions etc. An alternative way to describe the blast load is to use numerical simulations based on continuum mechanics. The blast load is determined by modelling the actual type and shape of the explosive in air or soil, where the explosive force transfers to the structure of interest. However, accuracy of the solution must be considered, where methods and models should be validated against experimental data. Within this work, tests with explosive placed in air, soil or a steel pot have been performed, where the blast load acts on steel target plates resulting in large deformations up to fracture. For the non-fractured target plates, the maximum dynamic and residual deformations of steel plates were measured, while the impulse transfer was measured in some tests. This thesis focuses on continuum based numerical simulations for describing the blast load, with validation against data from the experiments. The numerical and experimental results regarding structural deformation of blast loaded steel plates correlates relatively well against each other. Further, simulations regarding fracture of blast loaded steel plates show conservative results compared to experimental observations. However, more work needs to be undertaken regarding numerical methods to predict fracture on blast loaded structures. The main conclusion of this work is that numerical simulations of blast loading on steel plates, leading to large deformations up to fracture, can be described with sufficient accuracy for design purposes.

A detonating explosive interacting with a deformable structure is a highly transient and non-linear event. In field blast trials of military vehicles, a standard procedure is often followed in order to reduce the uncertainties and increase the quality of the test. If the explosive is buried in the ground, the state of the soil must meet specific demands. In the present work, laboratory experiments have been performed to characterize the behaviour of a soil material. Soil may be considered a three-phase medium, consisting of solid grains, water and air. Variations between the amounts of these phases affect the mechanical properties of the soil. The experimental outcome has formed input data to represent the soil behaviour included in a three-phase elastic-plastic cap model. This unified constitutive model for soil has been used for numerical simulations representing field blast trials, where the explosive load is interacting with a deformable structure. The blast trials included explosive buried at different depths in wet or dry sand. A dependence of the soil initial conditions can be shown, both in the past field trials along with the numerical simulations. Even though some deviations exist, the simulations showed in general acceptable agreement with the experimental results.

Numerical simulations of air blast loading in the near-field acting on deformable steel plates have been performed and compared to experiments. Two types of air blast setups have been used, cylindrical explosive placed either in free air or in a steel pot. A numerical finite element convergence study of the discretisation sensitivity for the gas dynamics has been performed, with use of mapping results from 2D to 3D in an Eulerian reference frame. The result from the convergence study served as a foundation for development of the simulation models. Considering both air blast setups, the numerical results under predicted the measured plate deformations with 9.4–11.1%. Regarding the impulse transfer, the corresponding under prediction was only 1.0–1.6%. An influence of the friction can be shown, both in experiments and the simulations, although other uncertainties are involved as well. A simplified blast model based on empirical blast loading data representing spherical and hemispherical explosive shapes has been tested as an alternative to the Eulerian model. The result for the simplified blast model deviates largely compared to the experiments and the Eulerian model. The CPU time for the simplified blast model is however considerably shorter, and may still be useful in time consuming concept studies. All together, reasonable numerical results using reasonable model sizes can be achieved from near-field explosions in air.

In the past decade, there has been an increasing demand from governments for high level protections for military vehicles against explosives. However, designing and validation of protection is a time consuming and expensive process, where previous experience plays an important role. Development time and weight are the driving factors, where the weight influences vehicle performance. Numerical simulations are used as a tool in the design process, in order to reduce development time and optimise the protection. The explosive load acting on a structure is sometimes described with analytical functions, with limitations to shape and type of the explosive, confinement conditions etc. An alternative way to describe the blast load is to use numerical simulations based on continuum mechanics. The blast load is determined by modelling the actual type and shape of the explosive in air or sand, where the explosive force transfers to the structure of interest. However, accuracy of the solution must be considered, were methods and models should be validated against reliable experimental data. Within this work, tests with explosive placed in air, sand or a steel pot has been performed. For all tests, the dynamic and residual deformation of steel plates was measured, while the impulse transfer was measured for some tests. This thesis focuses on continuum based numerical simulations for describing the blast load, with validation against data from the experiments. The main conclusion of this work is that numerical simulations of air blast loading in the near-field can be described with sufficient accuracy.