Blast Wall Shielding Effectiveness

Abstract

Blast walls are frequently considered as a potential mitigation option to reduce the applied blast loading on a building or structure in cases where unacceptably high levels of blast damage are predicted. There are three general explosion types of interest with respect to blast loading: High Explosive (HE), Pressure Vessel Burst (PVB), and Vapor Cloud Explosion (VCE). The blast waves resulting from these explosion types can differ significantly in terms of blast wave shape and duration. The effectiveness of a blast wall depends on these blast wave parameters (shape and duration), as well as the blast wall parameters (e.g., height, width and standoff distance from the protected structure). The effectiveness of a blast wall in terms of mitigating the blast loading on a protected structure depends on the combination of the blast wave and blast wall parameters. However, little guidance is available on the effectiveness of blast walls as a mitigation option for non-HE explosion sources. The purpose of this paper is to characterize the effect of blast wave parameters on the effectiveness of a blast wall and to provide guidance on how to determine whether a blast wall is an effective and practical blast damage mitigation option for a given blast loading.