Transient response of a plate–liquid system under an aerial detonation : Simulations and experiments

This paper presents a mixed numerical approach to model the blast waves generated by the detonation of a spherical stoichiometric mixture of propane and oxygen, impacting a plate–liquid system. The problem is split into two parts. The first calculation part relies on the modeling of the blast load and its propagation. Over-pressure distribution, in this part, is presented and reveals a very good level of agreement with experimental results. The time and space scales of the blast load data must be compatible with the plate–liquid system. This compatibility is ensured by an appropriate spatio-temporal interpolation technique. This technique is presented and its effectiveness and accuracy are demonstrated. The second part consists in modeling the response of the coupled plate–liquid system under the numerical blast load model. Experiments at reduced scale are carried out in two configurations in order to assess the effectiveness of this mixed numerical approach. Convincing results are obtained and discussed.