A Software Framework for Blast Event Simulation

Abstract : Protection of US Army vehicles and personnel against landmine and IED threats is an increasingly important concern in the area of defense research. In this paper we describe the development of a Blast Computational Framework (BCF) that will provide an advanced modeling environment and a suite of tools for performing soil bound explosion simulations and their effects on vehicles and on the human occupants of the vehicles. The BCF will provide a virtual test-bed where disparate computational models can seamlessly interact with one another to provide a unified modeling solution for blast-vehicle-occupant scenarios. The BCF is being developed using state-of-the-art component-based software architecture and will provide a suite of integrated models consisting of both new and existing simulation tools. The enhanced simulation capabilities provided by the BCF will serve to better protect the crews of existing vehicles and to help design next-generation vehicles as well.