Modeling of aqueous foam blast wave attenuation

Abstract

The use of aqueous foams enables the mitigation of blast waves induced by the explosion of energetic materials. The two-phase confinement gives rise to interphase interactions between the gaseous and liquid phases, which role have been emphasized in shock-tube studies with solid foams [1, 2]. Multifluid formalism enables the thermo-mechanical disequilibria between phases to be taken into account. The flow model ensures the correct estimation of the acoustic impedance of the two-phase media. As for the numerical scheme, Riemann solvers are used to describe the microscopic fluid interactions, the summation of which provides the multiphase flux. The role of the different transfer mechanisms is evaluated in the case where the liquid ligaments of the foam matrix have been shattered into droplets by the shock impingement. Characteristics of blast waves in heterogeneous media leads to a decrease of overpressure. The numerical results have been compared favorably to experimental data [3, 4].