Abstract: The failure pattern of embankment under explosive load is of great importance to the national defence as well as engineering application. In order to study the failure formations of embankments under different explosion conditions, the constitutive model which can well describe the dynamic property of soil is proposed in the frame of LS-DYNA. Meanwhile, by means of multi-material arbitrary Lagrange-Euler method (ALE method), the simulations are implemented for homogeneous earthfill dams under explosive load; the crater formations are obtained with different buried depths of explosive and different pore water pressure developments of soil. The numerical results reveal that the crater size increases with the increasing of buried depth of explosive, while crater can’t develop if the buried depth beyond a certain range. In addition, the pore water pressure development of moist soils is significant to the formation of blasting craters; with the increasing of pore pressure development, the crater tends to grow bigger. These analysis results can provide references for the design of embankments safety and for engineering application such as blasting demolition of barrier dams.

Key words: explosive load, crater, pore water pressure, dam safety, multi-material ALE method