Abstract
This paper presents numerical and analytical studies of the response of a sacrificial cladding structure with an Alporas aluminum foam core and a thick mild steel cover and rear plates under blast loading. A suitable numerical model in LS-DYNA based on the coupled Load Blast Enhanced/Multi-Material Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (LBE/MM-ALE) methods is selected and validated using the experimental data available in the literature. The shock front propagation and micro-inertia effects are responsible for the strength enhancement predicted in the virtual blast test. Two models with different decaying blast loading functions are examined to study the fluid-structure interaction (FSI) effect. The simulation results show that the FSI effect is negligible if the foam core is strain-rate insensitive. Further investigations should be conducted with analytical models if the core material of the sacrificial cladding structures exhibits a strong strain-rate effect (for example, Alporas foam).