The simultaneous macroscopic and mesoscopic numerical simulation of metal spalling by using the fine-mesh finite element—smoothed particle hydrodynamics adaptive method

It is extremely important to predict the growth, aggregation, and coalescence failure of voids during the dynamic tensile fracture of ductile metals. In the present work, we used the finite element—smoothed particle hydrodynamics (FE-SPH) adaptive method to simulate the plate impact of tantalum simultaneously from macro- and meso-scales. For macro simulation results, the spallation phenomena and free-surface velocity were in good agreement with the experimental results, verifying the correctness of the simulation method and material model. Moreover, the free surface velocity profiles simulated by the FE-SPH adaptive method is closer to the experiment than those by the finite element method. According to the magnified details of the damage, we envisaged that the deleted elements are converted to SPH particles to represent the formation of voids. By comparing the porosity, we demonstrated the rationality of this envisagement and determined the fine mesh size to simulate growth, aggregation, and coalescence of actual meso-voids. On this basis, we proposed a void-position tracking method to accurately track the temporal and spatial information of voids. Such information would provide a detailed range of damage and describe the features and macro factors affecting void evolution. In general, the fine mesh FE-SPH method can well predict the damage distribution of spallation simultaneously in macro- and meso-scales, and this simple method has important applications.