Abstract:
The global effects caused by the blast of explosives under a vehicle structures prompt to the consequent severe injury effects on the vehicle occupants. The designing of vehicles to defend occupants from a blast load is a challenging task due to the presence of intricate sets phenomena and design variables involved from the point of the explosion to the response of the occupants. Under this study, two concepts were developed to minimize the blast-induced injury effects of occupants. The first concept targeted on the substitution of steel material based occupant compartment of the vehicle by the fiber reinforced composites. Glass fiber reinforced composite (GFRC) and carbon fiber reinforced composite (CFRC) based vehicles compartment were developed and compared to a vehicle whose occupant compartment is developed from steel, with a flat shaped floor. The second concept focused on the application of hybrid bonded-bolted joining mechanism in order to join vehicle chassis to an occupant compartment, for only GFRC and CFRC based vehicles. The occupant injury level reduction effect of all these variable vehicle structures was compared. The finite element method (FEM) based numerical analysis has been performed with the generic simplified Armor Passenger Vehicle (APV) geometrical CAD model; including the unrestrained occupant dummy model. The computational analysis has been done using Ansys Explicit dynamics analysis software package. FE model results showed that a high level of occupant injuries was predicted in each vehicle structure configuration. But, it was revealed that a high level of blast pressure was mitigated by using a composite based compartment and hybrid-based joint structures. The high level of injuries reduction has been examined for a carbon fiber reinforced/epoxy composite based occupant compartment and a polyurethane adhesive based hybrid joint FE model.