MASSIVELY PARALLEL EXTENSION OF THE GAMMA-SPH APPROACH FOR DEFENSE APPLICATIONS

Abstract

High velocity impact simulations are critical for designing defense and space systems, but conventional numerical methods struggle with complex geometries. The meshless approach, particularly Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH), offers an alternative by handling large deformations and arbitrary shapes. However, SPH faces issues like instabilities leading to numerical inaccuracies. The gamma-SPH scheme addresses these challenges by enhancing stability and accuracy, eliminating spurious oscillations, and tackling tensile instability. This improved method has been successfully applied to simulate shaped charge interactions with explosive reactive armor using a single GPU implementation. The defense industry's need for computational efficiency has driven the development of a high-performance computing (HPC) version of gamma-SPH, optimized for parallel processing. Achieving approximately 92% scaling efficiency on hundreds of GPUs, this HPC version significantly reduces simulation time and processes billions of particles, offering unparalleled capabilities for defense applications like shaped charges, concrete penetration and natural fragmentation.