Blast mitigation of a novel curtain-type blast wall

Abstract

Blast wall is an effective measure to block shock wave propagation for the protection of structures and people behind the wall in explosion events. In this study, an innovative curtain-type blast wall composed of individual hanging steel plates was proposed. Unlike conventional blast walls, which rely on the stiffness and strength of solid structures or the plastic deformation of sacrificial layers to counteract blast waves, the developed curtain-type blast wall attenuates blast waves by converting partial blast energy into kinetic energy and the interference between blast waves. This novel approach mitigates damage to conventional blast walls thus make the blast wall be able to resist multiple attacks and reduces the threats of secondary debris from damaged blast walls. To demonstrate the blast wave mitigation performance, numerical model was developed using LS-DYNA and validated against test data. The blast wave propagation and dynamic response of curtain-type blast walls against blast loads were simulated. It was found that using the curtain-type blast wall can achieve an overpressure (impulse) reduction of up to 70.2 % (63.8 %) as compared to the free field blast scenario. Parametric analysis was also carried out to investigate, the effect of factors such as the blast intensities, dimensions (width and height) of steel plates and spacing between individual steel plates on blast wave mitigation performance.