Numerical and Experimental Investigation of Surface Explosion Induced Crater Formation Using a Coupled Eulerian Lagrangian Approach

Abstract

Ground contact explosions do not cause significant deformation or crater formation on the ground. This situation is of critical importance in forensic explosion analysis and blast-resistant structural design. In this study, a multiscale numerical model based on the Coupled Eulerian–Lagrangian (CEL) method was developed in Abaqus/Explicit software to model craters formed as a result of contact explosions applied to the ground. The model was calibrated using controlled field tests conducted on low-plasticity clay-silt (CL) soil with 1, 2, and 3 kg of TNT equivalent and validated using a real vehicle-induced explosion event that occurred in Elazığ in 2016 with approximately 2 tons of TNT equivalent on soil with the same properties.Soil behavior was defined using the Mohr–Coulomb plasticity model, while explosive behavior was defined using the Jones–Wilkins–Lee (JWL) state equation. Basic geometric parameters such as crater diameter, depth, depth/diameter ratio, and blast index were evaluated across three orders of explosive mass. The numerical results were found to be consistent with field measurements; error rates were below 5% for small-scale experiments and below 8% for large-scale explosions. The results show that as the explosive mass increases, craters become proportionally wider and deeper due to increased lateral energy dispersion. The developed CEL-based numerical approach provides a reliable engineering tool for forensic explosion analysis and the evaluation of ground behavior under extreme loading.