An artificial-viscosity method for the lagrangian analysis of shocks in solids with strength on unstructured, arbitrary-order tetrahedral meshes

We present an artificial viscosity scheme tailored to finite-deformation Lagrangian calculations of shocks in materials with or without strength on unstructured tetrahedral meshes of arbitrary order. The artificial viscous stresses are deviatoric and satisfy material-frame indifference exactly. We have assessed the performance of the method on selected tests, including: a two-dimensional shock tube problem on an ideal gas; a two-dimensional piston problem on tantalum without strength; and a three-dimensional plate impact problem on tantalum with strength. In all cases, the artificial viscosity scheme returns stable and ostensibly oscillation-free solutions on meshes which greatly underresolve the actual shock thickness. The scheme typically spreads the shock over 4 to 6 elements and captures accurately the shock velocities and jump conditions. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.