Numerical Visualization of Blast Wave Interacting with Objects

Blast wave interaction with objects has gained attention due to military conflict and terrorist attack across the globe. Blast wave attenuating and mitigating structures are needed to be developed to protect the military vehicles and commercial buildings. In order to understand the attenuating mechanism such as the dissipation and dispersion along with the secondary effects, the blast wave interacting with three objects is examined in the present study for the diaphragm pressure ratio of 56. Here, the blast wave is generated in a short driver section open ended shock tube by solving the Euler equations using the commercial software ANSYS Fluent. It has been observed that the circular disc attenuates the blast wave more effectively compared to the cone and sphere for the same frontal area. The attenuation was lowest in the sphere and maximum in the circular disc. However, the loads acting on the sphere was more compared to the conical object. The peak load acting on the circular disc was 2.09 times more compared to the peak load acting on the conical object (cone angle 26.5°) with the same hydraulic diameter.