Revisiting the Pipe Bomb V&V Problem using the BCJ Material Model
For weapon safety assessments, Sandia has an interest in accurately predicting failure of pressure vessels at high temperature. In order to assess Sandia's predictive capability for these problems, a simplified validation problem for thermo-mechanical failure due to pressurization was developed and is referred to as the pipe bomb problem. In this study, several pipes were heated in a non-isothermal manner and pressurized until failure. The previous attempt to accurately predict the pipe bombs' failure pressures demonstrated a notable unconservative prediction. Due to this large bias in the simulation failure pressures toward higher pressures, we assumed that a mechanism driving failure or another aspect of the tests was missed in the original models. The goal of this work was to investigate potential sources of this bias focusing on geometric uncertainty and material model assumptions. As with the previous work, our simulations of the pipe bomb experiments using the BCJ material model over predicted the failure pressures. While success cannot be claimed for the simulated failure pressures, we believe we accurately identified the remaining sources of error in the simulations. Specifically, the temperature mapping algorithm and the geometry are believed to be the primary contributors to the errors. As a result, future work should focus on improving the temperature mapping algorithm and consider using temperature fields determined by a calibrated thermal model that includes convection. Additionally, CT scans of remaining portions of the pipe bomb material inner diameter should be taken to further understand the variability this unmachined surface introduced to the pipe bomb specimens.