Abstract
The shock wave generated from a high explosive detonation can cause significant damage to any objects that it encounters, particularly those objects located close to the source of the explosion. Understanding blast wave development and accurately quantifying its effect on structural systems remains a considerable challenge to the scientific community. This paper presents a comprehensive experimental study into the loading acting on, and subsequent deformation of, targets subjected to near-field explosive detonations. Two experimental test series were conducted at the University of Sheffield (UoS), UK, and the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa, where blast load distributions using Hopkinson pressure bars and dynamic target deflections using digital image correlation were measured respectively. It is shown through conservation of momentum and Hopkinson-Cranz scaling that initial plate velocity profiles are directly proportional to the imparted impulse distribution, and that spatial variations in loading as a result of surface instabilities in the expanding detonation product cloud are significant enough to influence the transient displacement profile of a blast loaded plate.
Highlights
When a blast wave interacts with a structure located close to the source of the explosive, the resulting transient blast load is extremely high magnitude, short duration, and highly spatially non-uniform over the face of the target
This paper presents a combined experimental study into the specific impulse distribution and resultant transient plate deformation arising from the interaction of a near-field explosive detonation with a target plate
Similar scaled experiments were conducted at the Blast Impact & Survivability Unit (BISRU) at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa, to measure the transient deformation of circular plates exposed to nearfield explosive blasts
Summary
When a blast wave interacts with a structure located close to the source of the explosive, the resulting transient blast load is extremely high magnitude, short duration, and highly spatially non-uniform over the face of the target. Experimental tests at the University of Sheffield (UoS), UK, measured the spatial and temporal distribution of pressure and specific impulse resulting from the detonation of spherical and cylindrical charges close to the surface of a nominally rigid target plate. An alternative, developed in 1914 by Bertram Hopkinson, is the apparatus known as the Hopkinson pressure bar (HPB) [9], consisting of a length of cylindrical bar which propagates an elastic stress pulse along its axis to be recorded by sensitive equipment situated a safe distance from the loaded end Whilst it is more commonly used in its ‘split’ form for high strain-rate material testing [10], the HPB is still a valuable tool for measuring highmagnitude, short-duration loading [11,12,13,14,15,16]. HPBs are used in this study at UoS to record the spatial and temporal distribution of loading acting on a rigid target located close to an explosive
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