Proceedings of PVP2003
2003 ASME Pressure Vessels and Piping Conference
THE EFFECT OF PRESSURE VESSEL IN EXPLOSIVE FORMING
Hirofumi lyama
Department of Mechanical and Electrical
Engineering, Yatsushiro National College of
Technology, 2627 Hirayamashin-machi,
Yatsushiro, Kumamoto 866-8501, Japan
Shiro Nagano
Deptartment of Mechanical Engineering and
Material Science, Kumamoto University.
2-39-1 Kurokami, Kumamoto City, Kumamoto
860-8555, Japan.
ABSTRACT
Explosive forming is one of the unconventional
techniques, in which, most commonly, the water is used as the
pressure transmission medium. The explosive is set at the top
of the pressure vessel filled with water, and is detonated by an
electric detonator. The underwater shock wave propagates
through the water medium and impinges on the metal plate,
which in turn, deforms. There is another pressure pulse acting
on the metal plate as the secondary by product of the expansion
of the gas generated by detonation of explosive. The secondary
pressure pulse duration is longer and the peak pressure is
lower than the primary shock pressure. However, the intensity
of these pressure pulse is based also on the conditions of a
pressure vessel. In order to understand the influence of the
configuration of the pressure vessel on the deformation of a
metal plate, numerical analysis was performed. This paper
reports those results.
INTRODUCTION
When an explosive is detonated underwater, an underwater
shock wave is generated which is primarily responsible for the
plastic deformation of the metal plate. After the impingement
of this primary underwater shock wave on the metal plate, a
secondary pressure pulse, generated from the expanding
gaseous products of the detonation, impinges on the metal
plate. These pressure states of acting on a metal plate change
with the type of the container to be used. The shock pressure
and gas pressure acting on a metal plate in the case of the
sealed pressure vessel can be predicted easily. On the method
of the explosive forming which Iyama et al. has performed,
arbitrary deformation of the metal plate is obtained by
changing the position of an explosive [Itoh et al., 2002].
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July 20-24, 2003 Cleveland Ohio, USA
PVP2003-1979
K. Raghukandan
Department. of Manufacturing Engineering,
Annamalai University, Annamalainagar-608 002,
Tamilnadu, India.
Shigeru Itoh
Shock Wave and Condensed Matter, Research
Center, Kumamoto University, 2-39-1 Kurokami,
Kumamoto 860 -8555, Japan.
However, in this method, the required forming configuration
was obtained with a lidless pressure vessel. Nevertheless, in
the case of employing a simple water filled container the
influence of reflected pressure from sidewall of container is
significant. If no container is used then there is almost no
influence of gas pressure.
Therefore, an attempt was made to investigate the
influence of the pressure vessels on the deformation of a
metal plate. Three types of pressure containers were used and
performed numerical simulations were performed. The results
are reported in this paper.
SIMULATION METHOD
Figure 1 shows three simulated models of underwater
explosive forming. All models were for axi-symmetric free
forming operations. Free forming indicates that the metal plate
deforms by overhanging.
In model 1, the pressure acts on a metal plate without the
confinement of pressure vessel. In model 2, there was no lid
for the container. The pressure pulse released ffi-om the upper
part of explosive is unrestricted because of the lidless
container. In model 3, an airtight container was used. In all
models, the copper plate with 2 mm thick and of diameter 230
ram. The size of an explosive was determined as in model h
Moreover, distance between the explosive and metal plate was
set to 30 ram. SEP explosive (Asahi Kasei Colrp., Japans was
employed. The density of SEP explosive is 1.31kg/m ~ and
detonation pressure is 15.9 GPa. The copper plate was placed
on the die. The die shoulder is of 15 mm radius of curvature.
The pressure vessel and die holder are assumed to be rigid
body.
1 Copyright © 2003 by ASME
 W~lt~r i'-.nnff~irll~r

~r
230mm
Pressu~ vessel Explosive

Omm 30mm
i i ::ii;i i ::::ii ii
............... i;:i:.:12i i i iiii i i i:iLii i i:ii] ! .............
}N:;5!:!:~:~:~:~:!:~:!:~:~:~:
' Nx .,x.:.:,-,...-..,....:...............,...~

Iii':':'*'*~:'*~:..~.'.:.":.copp~
....... ':.'~. i~ ~iiilliiiiii~iii~iiiiiiiiiiN
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Figure 1 Simulation models for free forming using underwater shock wave.

The r-z coordinates are set as shown in Fig.1. The where, A, B, R~, R2, C, and w are constants (or JWL
simulation method is finite difference method (FDM) using parameters). V is the ratio of the volume of the product gases to
Lagrangian coordinates [Iyama et al., 2001]. initial volume of the undetonated explosive. For the explosive
The copper plate is treated as the viscous elastic-plastic of SEP, those constants were obtained from cylindrical
material. The constitutive equation of copper is described by the expansion test and are given in Table 2.
following equation (Tanimura, 1992),
Table 2. JWL parameters for SEP explosive.
ep = 20+430ep °445+2.9x 103ip A(GPa) B(GPa) R1 R2 (O)
+3.2911n(ip/5.0xlO 4) (MPa) (1) 365 2.31 4.30 1.10 0.28
where, o p is the equivalent stress, ~ pis the equivalent strain
and i v is the equivalent strain rate. For the calculation of detonation of the explosive, the C-J
The pressure is solved from the following Mie-Gr0meisen volume burn method (Mader, 1979) was used.. When the
equation of state (McQueen et al., 1970), volume of the cell of the original explosive in the calculation
becomes equal to the volume of the detonation products at
P°C°2r/ [ F °2 r / . ] + F 0 p 0 e (2) Chapman-Jouguet (C-J) state, the solid explosive is assumed to
1
be completely decomposed into the gaseous products. Let V0
represent the initial volume of explosive (the reciprocal of the
where, p 0 is initial density, e is energy, F0 is GrOneisen initial density), Vcj be the volume of the detonation products at
parameter, r l = l - o o / p , Co and s are material constants. For the C-J state, the reaction rate of the explosive is simply
the related materials, the values of those constants are given in expressed as,
Table 1. V-V
W =1 o (4)
Table 1. Material constants in Mie-Gr~neisen EOS. V-V
0 cj
po (kgm') Co(m/s) S Fo
Water 1000 1490 1.79 1.65 P = (1 - W )Pg (5)
Copper 8930 3940 1.48 1.96
where, W stands for the mass fraction of the unreacted
The pressure in detonation products of explosive is explosive, thus, before and after reaction, W=I or O,
calculated by using the JWL (Jones-Wilkins-Lee) equation of respectively, Pg is the pressure of the detonation products. The
state (Lee et al., 1973). The equation has the following pressure, P, correspondingly, is assumed to be equal to that of
expression, the detonation products of the partly reacted explosive over the
whole cell. The pressure, volume and energy of the reacted
P 1 o) exp V +B 1 a) ¢xp V +toe (3) explosive are correlated by the JWL equation of state already
described above.

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 SIMULATION RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Figure 2 shows the pressure contours inside the containers
of the three models to a maximum pressure pulse duration of 50
gs. In model 1, when the pressure pulse in the water medium
reaches both side ends or upper interface, a pressure reduction
takes place and consequently the pressure pulse is not adequate
to impinge on the metal plate in the duration of 50 Its. In
models 2 and 3, once the underwater shock wave impinges on
the metal plate, it gets deflected and further gets reflected on
the sidewalls of the container.
Figure 3 shows the pressure profiles of the water element
on the copper plate in the position of r = 0 to 50 rnm.
Furthermore, the pressure history, in which time of the
horizontal axis is extended till 800 Its, is shown in Fig. 4. In
all the models the pressure pulse is seen to act on the metal
plate from the central part, and the pressure peak is also
observed to be decreasing gradually from central part.
Moreover, since the pressure pulse is exposed following the non
availability of a confined pressure vessel in model 1, the
pressure action is hardly seen after about 32Its duration.
However, in models 2 and 3, a pressure rise in a sidewall part is
seen in about 40 Its. In Fig. 4, the pressure rise of the central
part of models 2 and 3 is seen in about 470 ms and 390 ms,
respectively. In these models, the reflected underwater shock
wave converges in the center after getting reflected from the
sidewall of container, and, therefore, such pressure rise is seen.
Moreover, the peak value has a large direction in the case of the
model 3 in which an airtight container is used. Moreover, in
model 3, the pressure with comparatively lower and longer
action time is considered to be the expansion gas pressure
which occurs immediately after the rapid pressure rise of the
secondary wave. Thereby, a final overhang deformation of
metal plate is performed.
Figure 5 shows deformation process of each model.
Moreover, z-directional velocity of undersurface of the copper
plate at r = 0 to 50 mm is shown in Fig.6. In model 1, the
quantity of deformation of copper plate is small in comparison
with the other two models and the propagation of the plastic
bending wave of metal plate [Itoh et al., 2002] does not occur.
In model 2, the propagation of the plastic bending wave occurs
and the deformation of the copper plate at the central region is
seen in the last stage. In model 3, as the pressure pulse is of
larger magnitude in comparison with other models, the central
region of the copper plate is conical. In model 1, since the
projection of the copper plate central region is not seen, after
the z-direction velocity of the copper plate of the central part
reaches about 150 m/s, it decreases gradually. In model 2 and 3,
once the z-direction velocity of the central region of the copper
plate decreases, a rapid velocity increase is again seen in about
250 to 260 ms. Especially the second velocity increase in the
model 3 reaches up to about 230 m/s, and is larger than the first
velocity increase.
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CONCLUSIONS
Numerical simulations were performed, three models were
assumed, on the influence of a pressure vessel in underwater
explosive forming process. In the first model, there was no
pressure vessel on the metal plate, enveloping the explosive
charge. Consequently, the underwater shock wave generated by
detonation of explosive, was exposed all around. In the model 2
a lidless container was employed and the effect of the sidewall
reflected shock wave is also observed. In the final case (model
3) an airtight pressure vessel with lid was used. The pressure
distribution and the pressure history acting on the metal plate
varied, in all the three models, due to the differences in the
setup conditions. It is seen that the changes in the pressure
vessel influence the deformation process of the metal plate. In
the case the use of an airtight pressure vessel (model 3), as the
pressure generated inside the vessel was completely use,d,
without getting vented to atmosphere, for the deformation of
the metal plate, the deformation is significantly large and
therefore, the efficiency of the process.
REFERENCES
Itoh, S., Iyama, H., Katoh, Y, Murata, K., Raghukandan, K.,
Nagano, S., Muramoto and S., Matsumura, R., 2002, "The
Eccentric Spherical Free Metal Forming Using Underwater
Shock Wave", Proceedings, ASME PVt~ vol. 446-2, pp. 163-
170.
Itoh, S., Iyama, H., Raghukandan, K., Nagano, S.,
Matsumura, R., Muramoto, S., 2002, "On Study of Free Metal
Forming Using Underwater Shock Wave", Proceedings, ASME
PVE vol. 446-1, pp.161-167.
Iyama, H., Liu, Z., Y. and Itoh, S., 2001, "Numerical
Simulation of Free Forming Using Underwater Shock Wave",
Proceedings, ASME PVP, vol. 431, pp. 171-176.
Lee, E., Finger, M., and Collins, W., 1973, "JWL Equation of
State Coefficients for High Explosives", Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory report UCID- 16189, Livermore, CA.
Mader, C. L., 1979, Numerical Modeling of Detonations,
University of Califomia Press, Berkeley, CA.
McQueen, G., Marsh, S. P., Taylor, J. W., Fritz, J. N., and
Carter, W. J., 1970, "The Equation of State of Solids from
Shock Wave Studies", in High-Velocity-Impact Phenomena (Ed.
Kinslow, R.), p.230, Academic Press, NY
Tanimura, S., 1992, "Constitutive models for dynamic
behavior of metals", in proceedings of International symposium
on Impact Engineering, vol. 1, p. 17.
Wilkins, M. L., 1964, "Calculation of Elastic-Plastic Flow",
in Methods in Computational Physics (Eds. Alder, B.,
Fernbach, S. and Rotenberg, M.), Vol. 3, pp. 211-263,
Academic Press, N-Y.
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 F i g u r e 2 P r o p a g a t i o n o f t h e u n d e r w a t e r s h o c k w a v e f r o m 0 to 5 0 ~ s .
i i i i i i i i i i
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r(mm) r(mm)
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F i g u r e 3 P r e s s u r e p r o f i l e s o f w a t e r e l e m e n t o n t h e m e t a l p l a t e f r o m 0 t o lOOps.

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(C)Model 3

F i g u r e 4 P r e s s u r e p r o f i l e s o f w a t e r e l e m e n t o n t h e m e t a l p l a t e f r o m 0 to 8 0 0 p s .

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 Model 1 Model 2 Model3
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250 250 , • , , • ,

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T i m e ( m i c r o s©c.) Tbnc(micro sec.) T ~ n e ( m i c r o see.)

Figure 6 z-direction velocity of bottom surface of metal plate at each positions.

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