Some characteristics of an interior explosion within a room without venting

Abstract

The paper presents a study aimed at understanding some characteristics of an interior explosion within a room with limited or no venting. The explosion may occur in ammunition storage or result from a terrorist action or from a warhead that had penetrated into this room. The study includes numerical simulations of the problem and analytical derivations. Different types of analysis (1-D, 2-D and 3-D analysis) were performed for a room with rigid walls and the results were analyzed. For the 3D problem the effect of the charge size and its location within the room was investigated and a new insight regarding the pressure distribution on the interior wall as function of these parameters has been gained. The numerical analyses were carried out using the Eulerian multi-material approach. Further, an approximate analytical formula to predict the residual internal pressure was developed. The formula is based on the conservation law of total energy and its implementation yields very good agreement with the results obtained numerically using the complete statement of the problem for a wide range of explosive weights and room sizes that is expressed through a non-dimensional parameter. This new formula is superior to existing literature recommendations and compares considerably better with the above numerical results.