UTILIZATION OF FAST RUNNING MODELS IN BURIED BLAST SIMULATIONS OF GROUND VEHICLES FOR SIGNIFICANT COMPUTATIONAL EFFICIENCY

Over the course of typical survivability analyses for underbody blast events, a multitude of individual cases are examined where charge size, charge location relative to the vehicle, and vehicle clearance from the ground are varied, so as to arrive at a comprehensive assessment. While multi-physics computational tools have reduced the expense and difficulty of testing each loading case experimentally, these tools still often require significant execution and wall-clock times to perform the simulations. In efforts to greatly reduce the time required to conduct a holistic survivability analysis, Fast Running Models (FRMs) have been implemented and validated to act as a surrogate for the computationally expensive finite element tools in use today. Built using a small set of simulations, FRMs generate loading data in a matter of seconds, representing a significant improvement in survivability analysis turnaround time.