blastFoam used to support the Super Heavy Improvised Explosive Loading Demonstration (SHIELD)

Synthetik’s free and opensource blastFoam CFD airblast solver is being used to support the Super Heavy Improvised Explosive Loading Demonstration (SHIELD) - a multi-year, multinational program that includes a series of very large full-scale blast tests.

blastFoam is a software tool for modeling the physics of compressible multi-fluid flow in explosive detonations. The solver was developed from OpenFOAM, an unrestricted, parallel, open-source solver that provides a readily extensible and widely used library, is supported by a large and active community and provides mesh generation and pre/post-processing utilities.

blastFoam has been validated through comparisons with experimental data from laboratory tests of enclosed detonations and simple field tests with a reflective surface, and large domains/terrains for urban settings.

The SHIELD partner countries (Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, and the United States) wish to conduct very large blast tests as a means of assessing force protection methods and to determine VBIED forensic signatures. As part of the SHIELD program, blastFoam models have been developed and executed to support pre-test predictions, instrumentation design prior to the test, and for post-test analysis.

Video here: https://youtu.be/dRfk3baotgs