Possibilities of vacuum packed particles application in blast mitigation seats in military armored vehicles

Blast mitigation continues to be a popular field of research when military vehicles are concerned. The main problem is coping with the vehicle global motion consequences following an explosion. The paper presents a potential application of the linear vacuum packed particle (VPP) damper as a supplementation for a viscous shock absorber in a traditional blast mitigation seat design. The paper also presents field test results for the underbelly blast explosion, comparing them to the laboratory tests carried out on the impact bench. To collect accelerations, the anthropomorphic test device, i.e. the Hybrid III dummy, was used. A set of numerical simulations of the modified blast mitigation seat with the additional VPP linear damper were revealed. The VPP damper was modeled according to the Johnson–Cook model of viscoplasticity. The Hertzian contact theory was adopted to model the contact between the vehicle and the ground. The reduction of the dynamic response index (DRI) in the case of the VPP damper application was also proved