The interaction of oblique blast waves with buildings

Assessment of the net load imparted to a building that is oriented at some angle to an incident blast wave is complicated by the difficulty of establishing the impulse delivered to each part of the building’s surfaces. Expansion waves originating from the edges and top of the building—where regions of different pressures meet—tend to reduce the (oblique) reflected impulses that would develop on an infinitely large surface. This process is referred to as oblique clearing. An investigation which considered a single, tall building aligned obliquely to an effectively uniform blast wave has been undertaken with the aim of demonstrating and describing the path of these expansion waves as the blast wave passes over the building. The investigation comprised a series of small-scale experiments supported by numerical simulations using the code ftt_air3d. The loads arising at two scaled stand-off distances were considered. It is shown that depending on the angle of the building to the blast and the length of the blast wave with respect to the size of the building, the effect of the expansion waves may vary considerably, hence altering the load experienced by the building.