Development and deployment of constitutive softening routines in Eulerian hydrocodes.

The state of the art in failure modeling enables assessment of crack nucleation, propagation, and progression to fragmentation due to high velocity impact. Vulnerability assessments suggest a need to track material behavior through failure, to the point of fragmentation and beyond. This eld of research is particularly challenging for structures made of porous quasi-brittle materials, such as ceramics used in modern armor systems, due to the complex material response when loading exceeds the quasi-brittle material's elastic limit. Further complications arise when incorporating the quasi-brittle material response in multi-material Eulerian hydrocode simulations. In this report, recent e orts in coupling a ceramic materials response in the post-failure regime with an Eulerian hydro code are described. Material behavior is modeled by the Kayenta material model [2]and Alegra as the host nite element code [14]. Kayenta, a three invariant phenomenological plasticity model originally developed for modeling the stress response of geologic materials, has in recent years been used with some success in the modeling of ceramic and other quasi-brittle materials to high velocity impact. Due to the granular nature of ceramic materials, Kayenta allows for signi cant pressures to develop due to dilatant plastic ow, even in shear dominated loading where traditional equationsmore » of state predict little or no pressure response. When a material's ability to carry further load is compromised, Kayenta allows the material's strength and sti ness to progressively degrade through the evolution of damage to the point of material failure. As material dilatation and damage progress, accommodations are made within Alegra to treat in a consistent manner the evolving state.« less