Date of Award
Summer 2017
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Mechanical Engineering
First Advisor
Borg, John P.
Second Advisor
Singer, Simcha L.
Third Advisor
Bowman, Anthony J.
Abstract
Explosive device design has a wide impact in the space, manufacturing, military, and mining industries. As a step toward computer assisted design of explosives, an optimization framework was developed using the Design Analysis Kit for Optimization and Terrascale Applications (Dakota). This software was coupled with the hydrocode CTH. This framework was applied to three exploding cylinder models, two in 1D and one in 2D. Gradient descent, dividing rectangles, and a genetic algorithm were each applied to the one-dimensional models. Parametric studies were performed as a basis for comparison with the optimization algorithms, as well as qualifying the 1D model's accuracy. The gradient descent algorithm performed the best, when it converged on the optimum. Dividing rectangles took approximately twice as many iterations to converge as gradient descent, and the genetic algorithm performed marginally better than a full parametric study.