Strategy
The impact and explosion research group will maintain its successful track records on penetration mechanics, impact energy absorption and impact response of composite and cellular materials. We will continue our collaborations with relevant engineering sectors (automobile, aircraft, aerospace, nuclear power plant, defense, etc.) by offering integrated technical capabilities on impact and explosion experiments, simulations and engineering analyses.
With the rapid development of computing capability and computational mechanics, numerical simulation plays more important roles in structural analysis against impact and explosion loads, which requires understanding of material behaviors in a wide range of strain rates. Multi-physics and multi-scale modeling is necessary to develop physics-based constitutive models for engineering materials at high strain rates. Innovative techniques need to be developed to supply high quality experimental data at high strain rates to validate the materials models.
Hydrodynamics, shock physics, dynamic behaviour of energetic materials and hyper-velocity impact are extremely complex and difficult problems in the scope of impact and explosion. Coupling between impact/explosion effect and thermal effect occurs as a consequence of either the impact/explosion event or the fire event. The group intends to expand its modeling and simulation capabilities to these areas.