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A full-system, end-to-end blast modeling and simulation of vehicle underbody buried blast events typically includes detailed modeling of soil, high explosive (HE) charge and air. The complex computations involved in these simulations take days to just capture the initial 50-millisecond blast-off phase, and in some cases, even weeks. The single most intricate step in the buried blast event simulation is in the modeling of the explosive loading on the underbody structure from the blast products; it is also one of the most computationally expensive steps of the simulation. Therefore, there is significant interest in the modeling and simulation community to develop various methodologies for fast running tools to run full simulation events in quicker turnarounds of time.

In this paper, the capability of three methods of modelling detonation of high explosives (HE) buried in soil viz., (1) coupled discrete element & particle gas methods (DEM-PGM) (2) Structured - Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (S-ALE), and (3) Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE), are investigated. The ALE method of modeling the effects of buried charges in soil is well known and widely used in blast simulations today [1]. Due to high computational costs, inconsistent robustness and long run times, alternate modeling methods such as Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) [2, 9] and DEM are gaining more traction. In all these methods, accuracy of the analysis relies not only on the fidelity of the soil and high explosive models but also on the robustness of fluid-structure interaction. These high-fidelity models are also useful in generating fast running models (FRM) useful for rapid generation of blast simulation results of acceptable accuracy.

It is of considerable interest to developers of military vehicles, in early phases of the concept design process as well as in Analysis of Alternatives (AoA) phase, to quickly predict occupant injury risk due to under-body blast loading. The most common occupant injuries in these extremely short duration events arise out of the very high vertical acceleration of vehicle due to its close proximity to hot high pressure gases from the blast. In a prior study [16], an extensive parametric study was conducted in a systematic manner so as to create look-up tables or automated software tools that decision-makers can use to quickly estimate the different injury responses for both stroking and non-stroking seat systems in terms of a suitable blast load parameter. The primary objective of this paper is to quantitatively evaluate the accuracy of using such a tool in lieu of building a detailed model for simulation and occupant injury assessment.