Case Study: Picatinny Arsenal achieves more accurate blast simulations and enhanced armor protection with Dassault Systemes' Abaqus

Helping Keep Soldiers Safer with Realistic Simulation

Picatinny Arsenal’s ARDEC team needed to verify that an overhead cover add‑on for the Objective Gunner Protection Kit (OGPK) on HMMWVs would protect gunners from blast loading, including complex oblique reflections and shock interactions. To improve on their prior simplified pressure‑load approach they turned to Abaqus from Dassault Systemes, aiming for higher‑fidelity finite element simulations of blast‑structure interaction.

Using Dassault Systemes’ Abaqus with the Coupled Eulerian‑Lagrangian (CEL) capability, Picatinny validated the method with shock‑tube, spherical expansion, and 3D oblique‑reflection tests, then ran a detailed 3D CEL model (including Johnson‑Cook materials, connector elements, and a biased Eulerian mesh of ~2.6 million elements). The CEL results showed excellent correlation with theory and empirical TNT data, produced more realistic armor panel deflections than previous simplified methods, automatically captured reflected pressures on oblique surfaces, and positioned Picatinny to use Abaqus CEL for design‑phase and predictive blast analyses.

Picatinny Arsenal