Blast induced fracture modelling using smoothed particle hydrodynamics

In this study, a penalty based contact treatment in smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) along with variable particle resolutions are adopted to simulate the fracture of Barre granite under blast. The performance of the penalty based contact and different particle resolutions with varying arrangement patterns are illustrated with a number of examples. In order to perform particle convergence study, first order consistency has been enforced by Randles-Libersky modifications. The selection of values for artificial viscosity and tensile instability are presented to better understand the influence of these parameters on computational efficiency and instability problems in Eulerian SPH method. Then, the developed SPH approach is validated against experimental observations for both fracture patterns and crack density calculations. The results show that the SPH solution shows good convergence with increasing particle resolution and is highly dependent on the particle arrangement patterns and refinement parameters. It is also found that, the tensile instability stabilization method has important effect on the solution and the use of artificial viscosity helps to spread the shock wave smoothly into the rock particles. Overall, this research demonstrates that the developed SPH method can be used to qualitatively and quantitatively predict the blast induced fractures and is suitable for accurate modelling of rock under blast.