Numerical modeling of mixing and venting from explosions in underground chambers

2D and 3D numerical simulations were performed to study the dynamic interaction of explosion products in an underground concrete chamber with ambient air, barrels of water, and the surrounding walls and structure. The simulations were carried out with GEODYN, a multi-material, Godunov-based Eulerian code that employs adaptive mesh refinement and rum efficiently on massively parallel computer platforms. Tabular equations of state were used to model materials under shock loading. An appropriate constitutive model was used to describe the concrete. Interfaces between materials were either tracked with a volume-of-fluid method that used high-order reconstruction to specify the interface location and orientation, or a capturing approach was employed with the assumption of local thermal and mechanical equilibrium. A major focus of the study was to estimate the extent of water heating that could be obtained prior to venting of the chamber. Parameters investigated included the chamber layout. energy density in the chamber and the yield-to-water mass ratio. Turbulent mixing was found to be the dominant heat transfer mechanism for heating the water.