SPH AND ADAPTIVE FEM/SPH METHODS IN DEBRIS CLOUD SIMULATION

The Whipple shielding is the most common way to increase aerostructures safety by preventing main structures from the direct impact of the external threats which is broken into small pieces before reaching the witness plate. The diffusion of fragment pieces forms the debris cloud after the collision. It is necessary to understand debris cloud phenomenon to reduce the potential harmful consequence of the impact. To address this issue, it is important to have a reliable and efficient numerical tool to find the optimum shield design due to the high cost of the physical experiments. In this study, the traditional SPH and Adaptive FEM/SPH methods were compared based on the debris cloud’s feature and validated against the analytical model. Two different FEM/SPH adaptive models were used to understand the effect of the mesh regularity of the corresponding solid element. Results from this study indicate that the FEM/SPH adaptive method has lower computational cost than the traditional SPH method and the mesh regularity of the corresponding solid element is key point of the Adaptive FEM/SPH method. Yet, computational efficiency decreases with the increment in number of the element conversion.