Computer simulation of explosion crater

in dams with different buried depths of

explosive
Cite as: AIP Conference Proceedings 1955, 030039 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5033638
Published Online: 18 April 2018

Zhichao Zhang, and Longzhen Ye

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AIP Conference Proceedings 1955, 030039 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5033638 1955, 030039

© 2018 Author(s).
 Computer simulation of explosion crater in dams with
different buried depths of explosive
Zhichao Zhanga), Longzhen Yeb)

Key Laboratory of Geohazard Prevention of Hilly Mountains, Ministry of Land and Resources of China, Fujian
Fuzhou 350002 China.
a)
zhangzhichao0704@126.com
b)
526795885@qq.com

Abstract. Based on multi-material ALE method, this paper conducted a computer simulation on the explosion crater in
dams with different buried depths of explosive using LS-DYNA program. The results turn out that the crater size increases
with the increase of buried depth of explosive at first, but closed explosion cavity rather than a visible crater is formed
when the buried depth of explosive increases to some extent. The soil in the explosion cavity is taken away by the explosion
products and the soil under the explosion cavity is compressed with its density increased. The research can provide some
reference for the anti-explosion design of dams in the future.

Keywords: computer simulation; explosion; crater; dam; multi-material ALE method.

INTRODUCTION
There are a lot of water conservancy projects in China, many of which were built in densely populated areas. Water
conservancy project brings immeasurable economic benefits to the people, but in the meantime, it becomes the target
of wars or terrorist attacks. In view of the complicated political environment in China, local wars can still occur. Once
such dam projects are destroyed or even broken down under attacks, they will cause great loss to the people's life and
properties. On the other hand, using explosion loading to remove the abandoned embankments or barrier dams induced
by earthquakes or landslides can raise the efficiency of demolition obviously. For example, multiple barrier dams in
Wenchuan earthquake were succeeded removed by blasting demolition, which avoids the sudden break of the dams that
may cause severe floods. Hence, it is of great significance to study the explosion effect in a dam.
The most intuitionistic destruction form of geomaterials under explosion loading is crater. The previous studies on
the explosion crater mainly focused on the horizontal field, and the study on explosion crater in dams was rarely
researched. Sauseville [1] and Zimmie et al. [2-3] conducted a series of centrifuge tests on the explosion crater of
embankments as well as its stability after explosion. Using LS-DYNA program, Liu et al. [4] simulated the dynamic
response of an earth-rock dam under explosive loading, however, the explosive loading in his simulation is based on
the empirical data from TM5-585-1 manual, which is different from the actual explosive loading.
There are many factors that influence the damage effect of a dam under explosion, and the buried depth of explosive
is the most important one [5]. Therefore, using LS-DYNA program, this paper built the model of the air, explosives and
dam, and based on the multi-material ALE method, computer simulation is done on the explosion crater in dams with
different buried depths of explosive. The crater formation under different working conditions is studied by observing
the deformation of the material flow in post-processing. It aims to provide some guidance for the explosion-proof of
dam design

Advances in Materials, Machinery, Electronics II

AIP Conf. Proc. 1955, 030039-1–030039-7; https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5033638
Published by AIP Publishing. 978-0-7354-1654-3/$30.00

030039-1
 ALGORITHM AND CONSTITUTIVE MODEL

Multi-material ALE method

Multi-material ALE method allows a variety of materials in a grid, by tracking the boundary of each material, the
substance in the corresponding element is exchanged and trans missed. It combines the advantages of Lagrangian
method and Eulerian method, it solves the severe deformation problem in Lagrange method and overcomes the
complexity of moving boundary in Euler method. It is especially suitable to simulate the dynamic response of dam
under explosion load which includes various materials such as soil, air and explosive material that needs to handle both
the large mesh deformation and large interface deformation problem at the same time. The crater formation can be
observed by the flow of materials within the elements rather than by the mesh deformation or element deletion.

Soil constitutive model

The constitutive model MAT_FHWA_SOIL model [6-7] can consider the impact-induced strain rate effect, strain
hardening (softening) effect and pore water pressure etc., which is suitable to simulate the dam material.
The yield surface of this constitutive model is shown in Figure 1. Based on some references [6-8], the main soil
parameters are: density 1800 kg/m3; specific gravity 2.70; bulk modulus 2.70 MPa; shear modulus 19.4 MPa; friction
angle 30°; cohesion 27.3 kPa; yield surface modification coefficient 34.5 kPa; moisture content is 0; pour water pressure
coefficient Ksk is 0, which means that the pore water pressure is not considered, and total stress analysis is conducted
in this paper.

Shear stress

B
A Standard
B Modified

Pressure
FIGURE 1. Yield surface of MAT_FHWA_SOIL model

Explosive constitutive model

Use High_ explosive_ burn model and JWL equation of state to simulate the TNT explosive [6]. The JWL equation
of state can describe the pressure, volume and energy characteristics of detonation products accurately. Its expression
is:

Z Z Z E01
P A(1  )e R1V  B(1  )e R2V  (1)
RV
1 R2V V

Where: A, B, R1, R2, Z are material parameters˗E01 is the internal energy of the detonation product with unit
volume; V is the volume of detonation products produced by charge with unit volume˗P is the explosion pressure.
The parameters of explosive are: density 1630 kg/m3, detonation velocity 6930 m/s, CJ pressure 21 Gpa, A=371 GPa,
B= 3.23 GPa, R1=4.15, R2=0.95, Z =0.38, E01= 8.0E9 Pa, V=1.

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 Air constitutive model
The NULL model and the linear polynomial state equation are used to represent the constitutive relation of the air
[6]. By simplifying the air medium to a non-viscous ideal gas, the linear polynomial state equation can be reduced to
the following formula:

U
P ˄J ˅ E (2)
U0

Where: U is density; J is specific heat ratio; E is the internal energy with the initial unit volume. The parameters
are [6]: U =1. 25 kg/m3, J =1.4, E =0.25 MPa.

SIMULATION SCHEME
According to the experimental scheme in literature [3], the dam model is constructed with a height of 4 m, a bottom
width of 20 m, a top width of 4 m, and the slope ratio is 1:2. In order to reduce calculation time, the FE model is
simplified into a quasi-two-dimensional model with a unit thickness, and only the semi-model is established according
to the symmetry (See Figure 2). The model is discretized into 8668 nodes and 8578 elements. Reference elements
H1830 and H1569 are chosen to study the change of soil density.
The design explosive size is 0.4 m × 0.4 m × 0.1 m, and its mass is 26 kg. The explosive change locates on the
central line of the dam, and the buried depth is set as: (1) The center of the explosive is 0.2m above the top of the dam,
and the buried depth is -0.2m, i.e., the explosive is located on the top of the dam, which is called contact explosion. (2)
the center of the explosive is 0.3 m below the top of the dam, and the buried depth is 0.3 m; (3) buried depth of 0.6 m;
(4) buried depth of 0.8 m; (5) buried depth 1.3 m.
The dam crest and the dam slope which are bordered by the air are applied with free boundary. The bottom of the
dam is bordered by the infinite dam base; hence, non-reflective boundary is applied so as to simulate the transmission
of the explosion wave through this boundary in real condition.

FIGURE 2. Finite element model

SIMULATION RESULTS

Deformation and development of explosion crater

The morphology of explosion crater in a dam is shown in Figure 3. The dark part is the dam body, and the small
square on the central axis indicates the location of the explosive.
When the explosive is located on the top surface (Figure 3(a), contact explosion), most of the explosion energy
dissipated into the air, and a relatively small part of the energy works on the soil. Therefore, only the soil medium on
the bottom of the explosive are compressed to form a shallow pit in the dam crest.
When the explosive is completely buried, the compaction of the soil under the explosive and the throw of the
overburden soil layer on top of the explosive will produce the crater. After the explosion, the pressure wave was
spreading rapidly from the center of the explosive, and a spherical cavity was developed around the center of the
explosion, while the soil medium under the explosive formed a dense compression zone. After the pressure wave

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reaches the free surface of the dam crest, it is reflected back in the form of the sparse wave, and its stretching effect
causes the overburden soil layer on top of the explosive to become loose. The stretching effect of the sparse wave and
the thrust of the pressure wave induced by the detonating gas lead to a bulge near the dam crest. With the further
development of explosion products, cracks on the two sides of the explosion cavity extend gradually to the dam crest
and is connected with the earth's surface. Then the explosion products erupt along the cracks, and they carry a broken
soil medium together to rush out, which forms the prototype of a crater (Figure 3(b), (c), (d)). At this time, because the
energy released into the air is decreases gradually and the energy working directly on the soil medium is increased
gradually, the crater size increases with the increase of buried depth of explosive.
The energy released into the air has been ignored when the explosive is buried deeper than a certain depth, and the
further increase of buried depth has no effect on the energy released to the air. At the same time, as the pressure of
overburden soil layer on top the explosive is getting higher and higher, only the expanding effect of the explosion causes
the outward expansion of the soil medium, that is to say, the soil particles move along the radial direction at certain
velocity under the action of the explosion shock wave, and the explosion cavity expands gradually; As the shock waves
spread outward, the energy attenuates rapidly. when the shock wave reaches the compression interface, the impact on
the soil compression is over, and the blasting cavity extends to its limit. Finally, only a bulge forms near the dam crest
without obvious crater, and a closed underground detonation cavity appears in the dam body.
In the actual explosion test, some soil medium will fall back to form a "rock well". However, this paper has not yet
simulated the falling back of the soil medium, but through the multi-material ALE method, the macroscopic phenomena
of explosion craters with different buried depths of explosive are well simulated, which verifies the correctness of the
numerical method.

(a) Burial depth=-0.2 m (contact explosion)

(b) Burial depth=0.3 m

(c) Burial depth=0.6 m

(d) Burial depth=0.8 m

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 (e) Burial depth=1.3 m
FIGURE 3. Explosion craters under different Burial depths of explosive

Soil density change

Reference elements H1569 in the compression zone and H1830 in the cavity zone are chosen to track the time
history curve of soil density during simulation. The location of the reference elements are shown in Figure 3(d). Figure
4 is the comparison of time history curves of soil density with a buried depth of explosive of 0.8 m.
Seen from Figure 4, it can be found that the density of the soil medium under the explosive increases gradually due
to the compression of explosion wave. By comparison, the soil medium in the explosion cavity moves drastically after
severe shock compression, and soil particles were taken away by the explosion products, which forms a cavity.
Therefore, the soil density of element H1830 reduces to zero rapidly after a brief rise.

2500

2000
3
Density/kg/m

1500
H1830: Cavity zone
1000 H1569: Compression zone

500

0.00 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05

Time/s
FIGURE 4. Variation of soil density at explosion cavity and compacting region (burial depth=0.8 m)

Crater size change with burial depth of explosive

Figure 5 shows the relationship between the crater size in the dam and the buried depth of explosive. As the burial
depth of explosive increases, the diameter and depth of the crater are increasing (see Figure 3(a)~ (d)); However, when
the buried depth increases to 1.3 m, the crater cannot be produced, but a closed cavity is formed (see Figure 3 (e)).
Because this paper uses a quasi-two-dimensional model, the influence of the mass of explosive cannot be analyzed
quantitatively, hence, the crater size change in the dam with the burial depth of explosive can only be studied
qualitatively at present.

030039-5
 2.4
2.1
1.8

Crater size/m
1.5
1.2
0.9
0.6 Crater diameter
Crater depth
0.3
0.0
-0.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
Buried depth of explisve/m
FIGURE 5. Crater size change with burial depth of explosive

CONCLUSION
In this paper, the computer simulation study of explosive crater in the dam with different buried depth of explosive
was carried out, and the morphology of the explosion crater was analyzed. The following conclusions can be obtained:
(1) Using the multi-material ALE method, the shape of crater in the dam under explosive load can be simulated well
and evocatively.
(2) The buried depth of the explosive has an important influence on the crater, the size of the crater increases with
the increase of the buried depth at first. However, when the buried depth gets to certain extent, only a bulge forms near
the dam crest without obvious crater, and a closed underground detonation cavity appears in the dam body.
(3) The density of the soil medium under the explosive increases gradually due to the compression of explosion
wave, while the soil medium in the explosion cavity was taken away by the explosion products and as a result, the soil
density reduces to zero rapidly after a brief rise.
The research can provide some reference for the anti-explosion design of dam.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51609040), the Natural Science
Foundation of Fujian Province (2016J05112), Fujian science and technology innovation platform construction project
(2014y2007)

REFERENCES
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earth embankments and dams”, M.S. Thesis, Department of Civil& Environmental Engineering, Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York,2005.
2. Zimmie, T.F. and De, A. (1996), “Centrifuge Modeling to Study Stability of Dams,” 13th Annual Conf., Assoc.
of State Dam Safety Officials, Seattle, pp. 630-639.
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7. Wayne Y. LeeˊNUMERICAL MODELING OF BLAST-INDUCED LIQUEFACTION[D]. Brigham Young
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