Project 1-1: Multifield Simulation of Accelerated Environmental Degradation of Fabric, Composite, and Metallic Shields and Structures
Principal Investigators: Charbel Farhat (Stanford), Tarek Zohdi (UC Berkeley)

Adequately protecting soldiers without unnecessarily weighing them down is one of the Army’s greatest technological and operational challenges. To meet this challenge, AHPCRC researchers are developing advanced computer simulations of multifunctional ballistic fabrics, alone and attached to rigid supports. Lightweight protective fabrics reduce human casualties and damage to equipment, while standing up to the effects of weathering and prolonged storage. Computer models assist in trying out new configurations and understanding fabric properties.

Ballistic impact produces multiple physical effects at high speeds. HPC simulations, using parallel code to model nonlinear solid dynamics, allow researchers to examine material failures frame-by-frame, and to test various components singly or in groups. Simulations may suggest effective material configurations that are not intuitively obvious from experimental data alone.

AHPCRC researchers are adapting existing simulation codes for use in parallel processing applications and finite element analysis. They are also building new capabilities, such as modeling damage from various types of projectiles, accounting for imperfections introduced during the weaving of fabrics, evaluating methods for attaching the protective fabric to an underlying structure, and simulating the propagation and growth of flaws in fabrics.

Current work focuses on modeling fiber-based composite materials and on modeling the effects of moisture absorption, heat, and mechanical damage on ballistic fabrics in laminated and metal-substrate systems. Results of the modeling study are compared with laboratory tests performed at the University of California, Berkeley.

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