Meso-scale failure simulation of polymer bonded explosive with initial defects by the numerical manifold method

Polymer bonded explosive (PBX) is a composite consisting of the polymer binder and embedded explosive particles, along with a large number of the particle/binder interfaces as the third constituent. The particle volume fraction is often higher than 90%. In the present work, a visco-elastic constitutive model, an elastic visco-plastic constitutive model and a bilinear cohesive contact relationship model are implemented into the numerical manifold method (NMM) program, an open source code programmed with C language, to describe the deformations of the polymer binder, the explosive particles and the particle/binder interfaces, respectively. The fracturing of the polymer binder and explosive particles is described based on the maximum tensile stress and the Mohr-Coulomb criteria. Three categories of initial defects, including the initial interfacial debonding, initial voids in the polymer binder, and initial micro-cracks in the explosive particles, are considered in the PBX meso-structures under both uniaxial tensile and compressive conditions. The tension-compression asymmetry, the influence of the initial defects on the meso-structure failure modes/patterns and the macroscopic effective tensile/compressive strength of PBXs are investigated. The factors that cause the differences between the NMM results and other numerical or experimental results are analyzed and discussed. This work enables and proves the NMM to be an robust numerical tool for further simulation studies of the mechanical performances of PBXs, as well as other particle-filled composites, at the meso-scale.