Experimental investigation of blast wave propagation in an urban environment

Abstract

Experimental studies of blast propagation in urban environments are described in the literature, but only a few studies at laboratory scale were found while this scale option represents an economical and safe approach. Experimental investigations on blast wave propagation in a complex environment using gram-range explosive charges are proposed in this paper.Five experimental configurations, built with wood boxes on a 2.8 m wood table, are tested in a 1:200 reduced scale using three types of condensed phase explosives. Several characteristics of the explosives are given: the geometry of the explosion, the repeatability, and the TNT equivalent.An overview of impacts of a complex environment on the blast wave characteristics is proposed. The urban configurations investigated are the straight street, the T-junction, the cross junction, and the channeling. Investigations on reduced-scale effects on blast measurement and characteristics are detailed.