Dynamic responses of steel cylindrical shells under lateral explosion loading

By choosing naked cylindrical 75-g-TNT charges as explosion sources, impact experiments were carried out on steel cylindrical shells with the wall thickness of 2.75 mm and the outer diameter of 100 mm. The damage characteristics of the shells were obtained under different explosion conditions. The experimental results show that subjected to non-contact explosion, the cylindrical shell wall facing explosion deforms in a dish-shaped pit and the whole buckling deformation will occur along the axis of the cylindrical shell direction. The damage of the cylindrical shell is more serious when the shell-to-charge distance is bigger or the axis of the charge is perpendicular to the axis of the cylindrical shell. However, the crevasse and fragment will occur under the conditions of contact explosion. By means of LS-DYNA, the nonlinear dynamic response processes of the cylindrical shells subjected to explosion loading were numerically simulated with the Lagrangian-Eulerian coupling method. The deformation processes of the shell walls were described as well as the displacement-time and velocity-time curves of the impact points. The numerical simulation results are in good agreement with the experimental data. And based on the numerical simulations, the critical shell-to-charge distance was determined for estimating the rupture of the shell wall.