Strong explosion near a parallelepipedic structure

The purpose of this paper is to report the blast loading characteristics resulting from the detonation of a stoichiometric propane–oxygen mixture, and to validate the approach which relies on simulating TNT explosions at large scale by small-scale experiments of gaseous explosions. Several dimensionless correlations are obtained from experimental data. These relationships allow determination of the parameters of a blast wave interacting with a structure as a function of the positions of the explosive charge and the structure. Simulations carried out with the Autodyn code show good correlation with experimental results. The Hopkinson law is suggested to predict the blast wave’s parameters at large scale on the basis of small-scale experiments and simulations. This paper was based on work that was presented at the 20th International Colloquium on the Dynamics of Explosions and Reactive Systems, Montreal, Canada, July 31–August 5, 2005.