Multiscale modeling of high explosives for transportation accidents

Abstract

The development of a reaction model to simulate the accidental detonation of a large array of seismic boosters in a semi-truck subject to fire is considered. To test this model large scale simulations of explosions and detonations were performed by leveraging the massively parallel capabilities of the Uintah Computational Framework and the XSEDE computational resources. Computed stress profiles in bulk-scale explosive materials were validated using compaction simulations of hundred micron scale particles and found to compare favorably with experimental data. A validation study of reaction models for deflagration and detonation showed that computational grid cell sizes up to 10 mm could be used without loss of fidelity. The Uintah Computational Framework shows linear scaling up to 180K cores which combined with coarse resolution and validated models will now enable simulations of semi-truck scale transportation accidents for the first time.