A Conservative Eulerian Numerical Scheme for Elastoplasticity and Application to Plate Impact Problems

We present a numerical method for computing elastoplastic flows in metals. The method uses a conservative Eulerian formulation of elastoplasticity together with a higher order Godunov finite difference method combined with tracking of material boundaries. The Eulerian approach avoids the problem of mesh distortion caused by a Lagrangian remap, and can be easily extended to the computation of flows in multiple space dimensions using operator splitting. The method is validated by a comparison of computations with experiments on one-dimensional high-velocity plate impact. We obtain excellent agreement between our computations and experiment.