Research on a Sudden Explosion and its Environmental Impact

Abstract

A sudden blast was chosen as the studied topic. Also, one computer based virtual experimentation was used to estimate the dimensional impact of initial pollutant plume from blasts. Self-made method using Mathcad code was used to generate the output for the period of the first tenth of a second (1deci-second) to 1minute (60s) of the blast at the point source. It also depicted long-range air pollution travel within the first 1 to 10 minutes. In the case study, it assumed an average directional diffusivity of 1720 m2s-1 which is about 25 per cent of the average generated speed of common explosives. The newly developed model revealed a plume cloud impact of 6.8×107µgm-3 in the first 1millisecond (0.01s) which decayed suddenly to a value of 1.7×107µgm-3 in the first 1decisecond (0.1s). The impact concentration at the point source by the end of the first second (1.0s) was 3.2×105µgm-3 which implied a 99.5% sudden decay when compared to 0.01s concentration value at the emission point source. Computerized experiments observed that air pollutants release from explosives/blasts were dispersed into the atmosphere in the first few seconds by forceful injection instead of by gradual dispersion as is the case with normal air pollutants plume releases.