  This work outlines a diffuse interface method for the study of fracture and
fragmentation in ductile metals at high strain-rates in Eulerian finite volume
simulations. The work is based on an existing diffuse interface method capable
of simulating a broad range of different multi-physics applications, including
multi-material interaction, damage and void opening. The work at hand extends
this method with a technique to model realistic material inhomogeneities, and
examines the performance of the method on a selection of challenging problems.
Material inhomogeneities are included by evolving a scalar field that perturbs
a material's plastic yield stress. This perturbation results in non-uniform
fragments with a measurable statistical distribution, allowing for underlying
defects in a material to be modelled. As the underlying numerical scheme is
three dimensional, parallelisable and multi-physics-capable, the scheme can be
tested on a range of strenuous problems. These problems especially include a
three-dimensional explosively driven fracture study, with an explicitly
resolved condensed phase explosive. The new scheme compares well with both
experiment and previous numerical studies.
