Experimental investigations of the response of a portable container to blast, fragmentation, and thermal effects of energetic materials detonation

The detonation of an energetic material (EM) is manifested in the form of blast wave, fragmentation of casing material, and thermal effects. These effects are very destructive and cause injuries-being fatal-and structural damage as well. The attenuation of these effects is a prime focus. C4 explosive weighing 104 g was tested as surface burst. Peak overpressures of 1362 kPa and fireball radius of 0.65 m were measured. A multi-layer container comprised steel liner, Kevlar woven fabric, and laminated glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) was developed and investigated to counter the combined blast, fragmentation, and thermal effects of EM detonation. Commercially available shaving foam was characterized and used as filling material inside the container. The foam bubbles have shown a good stability with time. The shaving foam quenched the fireball and afterburning reactions owing to rapid heat and momentum transfer mechanism. The containment system provided more than 80% overpressure reduction with respect to an equivalent open-air detonation and also restricted any escape to lateral directions. Coupled Euler-ALE (Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian) approach was employed to numerically simulate the blast wave parameters. A good agreement is obtained between the simulation and experimental results.