The physics of explosion containment

On the effectiveness of ventilation to mitigate the damage of spherical chambers subjected to confined trinitrotoluene detonations

“…In that study, the elastic response of spherical chambers, which are subjected to a uniformly distributed internal transient pressure, was obtained using an equivalent single degree of freedom (SDoF) system and then expanded to consider its elastic–plastic response (Baker, 1960). White and colleagues (White et al, 1977, White and Trott, 1980) concluded that an increment in the static yield strength of the tank material can improve the agreement between the analytical and experimental results.…”

Improved theory of the elastic-plastic response of spherical containment vessels subjected to internal blast loading and its application

“…As pointed out by White [2], due to more explosive energy can be absorbed by plastic strain, the shell thickness of the vessel that allows certain plastic deformation is much smaller than that of the elastic design criteria, thereby substantially reducing difficulties in manufacture, transport, storage and disposal [4]. In addition, we discover that some improvements or corrections are needed for the Baker's theory [1]: (1) Analytical solutions in the plastic response phase (including perfect plasticity and linear plasticity) are incorrect after the transient pressure ends and before the elastic motion resumes, neglecting radius variation and shell thinning; (2) No equations of motion and the corresponding solutions are given after the elastic motion resumes, neglecting radius variation and shell thinning; (3) Only equation of motion is given in the plastic deformation phase, considering radius variation and shell thinning. However, in so far as the author has known, Baker's solutions are still widely accepted, such as they are almost completely quoted in the monograph of Yang, where only ε is altered to 2ε for the stressstrain relation in the plastic regime [26].…”

“…The basic equation of motion still applies, whereas shell thickness h and radius R can change over time in equation (2). As a spherical shell undergoes arbitrary deformation, the relations between displacement, radius and strain are as follows [27],…”

“…Explosion containment vessels have been widely used in the fields of manufacturing industry, public security, and national defense [2][3][4]. In order to assess the capability of containment shells to withstand the effects of internal blast, it is necessary to study its dynamic behaviour in both theoretical and practical senses.…”

“…Based on the work of Baker, extensive researches in the aspects of theory, experiment and numerical simulation have been carried out for the response of spherical explosion vessels [2][3][4][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. For example, Liu has monitored the pressure and temperature at the internal surface of a vessel as well as the strain of its external surface, which provides experimental data for understanding the whole process of flow field evolution and vessel response [22].…”