Development of a Structure for Blast Wave Mitigation

Abstract

The internal structure of a blast containment container has been developed and examined by experiments involving the explosion of a high explosive. A steel pipe was selected as an effective structure for blast mitigation, because it dramatically reduces the blast wave in the radial direction near the explosion source. To also reduce the blast wave in the axial direction, two types of model structures consisting of a steel pipe as the main part were examined by both high‐speed photography and pressure measurements of the blast waves. A 0.34‐scale internal structure was constructed by combining these structures. To induce a powerful mitigation effect, the internal structure was filled with a shock‐absorbing material. The peak pressures of C4 explosions in free air were obtained on the basis of the published blast wave data for TNT explosions in free air using an equivalent weight of 1.37. The peak pressures of the blast waves from the structures for all cases were compared with the blast wave data for C4 explosions in free air to estimate the blast mitigation effect. As a result it was estimated that the internal structure not only eliminates the blast pressure in the radial direction but also reduces the blast wave in the axial direction by 36 %. By combining the effects of the internal structure and the shock‐absorbing material, the structure can reduce the peak pressure by 75 %.