| EPSRC Reference: |
EP/P024866/1 |
| Title: |
Prediction of landmine effects on vehicles |
| Principal Investigator: |
Rigby, Dr SE |
| Other Investigators: |
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| Researcher Co-Investigators: |
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| Project Partners: |
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| Department: |
Civil and Structural Engineering |
| Organisation: |
University of Sheffield |
| Scheme: |
Overseas Travel Grants (OTGS) |
| Starts: |
01 April 2017 |
Ends: |
31 July 2017 |
Value (£): |
8,389
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| EPSRC Research Topic Classifications: |
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| EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications: |
| Transport Systems and Vehicles |
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Summary on Grant Application Form |
Detonation of a high explosive releases a vast amount of energy which violently displaces the surrounding air, causing a shock to form: an outward travelling wave of high-pressure, high-density compressed air. When this shock wave strikes an obstacle, e.g. a building component or an armoured vehicle underside, the momentum transferred can cause significant structural deformation and damage.
If we are to protect against blast effects, we must be able to quantify the expected loading and subsequent structural deformation from any given blast event. There is a pressing need for the blast protection community to develop quick-running analysis tools to link these two together, as often detailed experimental studies or sophisticated numerical analyses are unavailable or impractical, particularly given the inherent uncertainties associated with terror attacks. The primary challenge is that with blast analysis we can neither assume the loading is spatially uniform nor remains constant in time. Analysis methods based on classical mechanics are capable of treating temporal non-uniformity, however are constrained by the simplification of spatially uniform loading.
This project will bring together the expertise from two partner institutions. The Blast & Impact Dynamics Research Group at the University of Sheffield (UoS), UK, has a long record of collaborating with UK MoD and other government organisations to deliver high quality experimental and numerical studies of the effects of blast and impact loading. Research themes have concentrated in particular on the most fundamental issue in blast engineering; development of robust methods for characterising the loading on structures from intense dynamic events, and the group has a strong and growing reputation for research excellence in this field. The Blast, Impact & Survivability Research Unit (BISRU) at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa, is one of the leading research groups in the area of response of materials and structures to blast and impact loading. Established by Professor Gerald Nurick, currently under the leadership of Professor Genevieve Langdon, and including academics with backgrounds in materials research and structural analysis, the BISRU team has run numerous research programmes on the detailed measurement of transient material/structural response under high explosive blasts.
The UoS team has a unique experimental capability in measuring detailed maps of reflected pressure acting on a rigid plane situated some distance from an explosive charge. The UCT team have recently developed the capability to perform digital image correlation (DIC) on plates deforming under landmine/blast loading. The results from these two novel experimental techniques will be used to develop a new predictive method for the response of armour plates under blast loads. For the first time, we will have direct measurements of the spatial and temporal variation of both the applied loading and target response and hence how the distribution of loading influences deformation. Furthermore, the blast laboratories at each institution operate at the same physical scale, meaning like-for-like experiments can be conducted.
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Key Findings |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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Potential use in non-academic contexts |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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Impacts |
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| Description |
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk |
| Summary |
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| Date Materialised |
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Sectors submitted by the Researcher |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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| Project URL: |
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| Further Information: |
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| Organisation Website: |
http://www.shef.ac.uk |