Comparison of average radial expansion velocity from impacted liquid filled cylinders

In this paper, the average radial expansion velocity of an impacted fluid filled cylindrical target is investigated. Theoretical and numerical predictions of the radial expansion velocity are compared to the experimentally measured radial expansion velocity. The primary objective of this work is to assess the ability of these theoretical and numerical techniques to predict the radial expansion velocity. A secondary objective of this work is to quantify the effect of changes in dimensional scale on the radial expansion velocity and to construct a simple physics based model which incorporates these scaling effects. Two-dimensional numerical hydrocode simulations accurately predict the measured ejection velocity for tests with low projectile–target misalignment. However, three-dimensional numerical calculations, which account for this misalignment, accurately predict all experimental tests. A theoretical formulation, based on a simple conservation of energy principle, yields a zero-dimensional model which accurately predicts the two-dimensional hydrocode simulations. Thus for experimental simulations which have low projectile–target misalignment, the simple theoretical model developed here accurately predicts the average radial expansion velocity. A dimensional analysis of this theoretical formulation yields a scaling relationship which accurately predicts the effect of dimensional scale between two different experimental test series.