Modeling Hypervelocity Impacts Using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics

Hypervelocity impacts occur in outer space where debris and micrometeorites with a velocity of 2 km/s endanger spacecraft and satellites. A proper shield design, e.g. a laminated structure, is necessary to increase the protection capabilities. High velocities result in massive damages. The resulting large deformations can hardly be tackled with mesh based discretization methods. Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH), a Lagrangian meshless scheme, can resolve large topological changes whereas it still follows the continuous formulation. Derived by variational principles, SPH is able to capture large density fluctuations associated with hypervelocity impacts correctly. Although the impact region is locally limited, a much bigger domain has to be discretized because of strong outgoing pressure waves. A truncation of the computational domain is preferable to save computational power, but this leads to artificial reflections which influence the real physics. In this paper, hypervelocity impact (HVI) is modelled by means of basic conservation assumptions leading to the Euler equations of fluid dynamics accompanied by the Mie-Grueneisen equation of state. The newly developed simulation tool SPHlab presented in this work utilizes the discretization method smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) to capture large deformations. The model is validated through a number of test cases. Different approaches are presented for non-reflecting boundaries in order to tackle artificial reflections on a computational truncated domain. To simulate an HVI, the leading continuous equations are derived and the simulation tool SPHlab is developed. The method of characteristics allows to define proper boundary fluxes by removing the inwards travelling information. One- and two-dimensional model problems are examined which show excellent absorption behaviour. An hypervelocity impact into a laminated shield is simulated and analysed and a simple damage model is introduced to model a spallation failure mode.