LIHEM Failure Model Development
Previously, a factor of safety criterion for the IHEs (LX-17 and PBX 9502) was defined using the ultimate strength of the material based on uniaxial compression and tension data at various temperatures and strain rates and an experimentally derived failure surface. The probability of failure was subsequently calculated using this factor of safety, uncertainty data, and assumptions. This year, the methodology was extended to incorporate the effect of cyclic loading into the Livermore Insensitive High Explosives Mechanical (LIHEM) model. As mentioned in the previous section, we performed cyclic experiments on three-point-bend specimens in order to find cycles-to-failure as a function of failure load at various temperatures, frequencies, and amplitudes.