Mission

The goal of the NNSA Predictive Science Academic Alliance Program (PSAAP) is to bring about validated, large-scale, multidisciplinary, simulation-based Predictive Science as a major academic and applied research program. At Caltech's Center, Predictive Science will be demonstrated by means of a concerted and highly integrated experimental, computational, and analytical effort that focuses on an overarching ASC-class problem: hypervelocity normal and oblique impact of metallic projectiles and targets, at velocities up to 10 km/s. Depending on impact velocity and material choices, physics that challenge modeling and simulation include melting and vaporization, dissociation, ionization, and plasma formation; luminescence and radiative transport, solid-solid phase transitions, high-strain-rate deformation and thermomechanical coupling; fracture, fragmentation, spall and ejecta; deformation instabilities such as shear banding; and hydrodynamic instabilities and mixed-phase flows. The overarching hypervelocity impact application, in conjunction with a rigorous and novel methodology for model-based uncertainty quantification, provides the intellectual backbone of Caltech's Center and its chief organizing principle. In particular, the quantification of margins and uncertainties (QMU) closely coordinates the experimental, computational, modeling, software development, and verification and validation efforts.