DoD Funds Mason Research on Underwater Explosions

“The sophisticated phenomenon in underwater explosions is important for government agencies interested in protective design,” says Li, who specializes in computational fluid dynamics and mathematics.

The team ran more than 100 test cases to study the structural response and damage due to explosions. The resulting pressures and flow fields for different explosive yields and standoff distances are provided to the Department of Defense.

“[Girum] took more the structural part on it, and Lingquan and I did more the fluid part,” says Löhner, director of Mason’s Center for Computational Fluid Dynamics, where the team conducts these experiments. “So, we did the explosion in the water, and he did what happens when the shock wave hits the structure and how the structure [reacts].”

“We not only developed new numerical methods and new algorithms in order to compute these explosions, but we also delivered more than 120 results for different geometries, different loads, and different standoff distances,” says Löhner. “It has been extremely successful.” g