TNO – Defence Materiel Organisation

Increasing demands on ship explosion resistance require adequate modelling of the deformation and fracture behaviour of the ship structure at internal explosion loads. A large project (including a PhD project) is being performed in order to test and model the welded ship structure under explosion loading. Tensile tests at a velocity of 1,000 mm/s have been performed on large welded plate specimens. Modelling of the experiments including strain rate effects and material transitions at the welds, provides numerical predictions of ductile fracture.

Applied methods & software:

• Abaqus / LS-Dyna
• Materials testing at static & high strain rates
• Experiments on welded plates
• Full scale experiments of explosion loaded ship bulkheads