Vulnerability of Structures to Weapons Effect

The geotechnical and structures laboratory have a number of funded research efforts to support Department of Defense (DoD) requirements for understanding the response of structures to explosives/weapons. These efforts are all heavily dependent on high performance computing (HPC) simulations to meet research needs. The research efforts to be supported include: force protection, military operations in urban terrain, and homeland defense. HPC simulations are used to enhance ongoing experimental programs. The simulations are used to assist in designing experiments, to aid in understanding the experiments, to extend the knowledge beyond the limitations of the experiments, and to develop numerical databases. High-priority HPC hours available through the high performance computing modernization program (HPCMP) challenge project were used to perform these simulations. Simulation results are compared with experimental results when available.