Safety assessment of solid rocket motors under impact loading

Abstract
Safety and vulnerability activities have experienced a significant growth at CAEPE for the past decades. It is now a major actor, together with its state and industrial partners, for the safety evaluation and the qualification of all missiles to be used in the French armed forces. While test activities were presented in a previous paper [Cordier D. and Benard H., Presentation of CAEPE test facilities and validation by testing of a MURAT approach, Proc. IMEMTS (2006)], the objective is focused on the expertise activities and the numerical tools developed to assess the vulnerability of solid rocket motors under impact loading. Finite element models for low or high velocity impact are both developed using ANSYS-LS DYNA but the methods and constitutive models differ. The chain of events is completed by CRONOS. This home-developed software is able to predict the consequence of the explosion of a solid rocket motor in terms of danger areas.