Coupled Electromechanical Peristatic Simulation of Deformation and Damage Sensing in Granular Materials

Energetic materials or explosives are a class of granular composite materials consisting of explosive grains dispersed in a polymer matrix. An accidental low velocity impact during transportation may cause damage in the material, which may lead to weakening and possibly ignition of the material. Traditional SHM methods such external sensors or imaging techniques may not reveal changes in the internal microstructure of the material. It is proposed that dispersing carbon nanotubes in the polymer phase of the explosive material will introduce piezoresistivity by which the health of the material can be monitored in real time. In this work, a coupled electromechanical computational framework is developed to investigate nanocomposites and applied to model deformation and damage sensing in nanocomposite bonded explosive materials.