Deformation of Metal Pipe due to Underwater Shock Wave

Abstract

The deformation process of the metal pipes, accelerated by underwater shock wave resulting from the underwater detonation of explosive inside the metal pipe, was investigated by means of both the optical observation experiment and the numerical calculation. The expanding deformation of metal pipes was experimentally viewed by both framing and streak photographic means. A computer code based on the arbitrary Lagrangian and Eulerian (ALE) method was used to perform the numerical simulation on this problem. It has confirmed that the deformations of the metal pipes obtained from the streak photographs agree quite well with those obtained by the numerical calculation. The experimental and numerical results both show that the expanding velocity along the radial direction in aluminum pipe is larger than that in copper pipe, under the same loading conditions; and also, the time needed to reach the maximum radial velocity is shorter in aluminum pipe than in copper pipe. The calculations clearly indicate that the metal pipes are able to acquire a maximum expanding velocity along the radial direction in a very short time after the beginning of the action of underwater shock wave, and also this maximum velocity value only decreases a little in the later time period.