MITIGATING THE EFFETS OF EXPLOSIONS DURING THE RECLAMATION OF UNDETONATED WAR DEVICES

The protection of facilities against explosions represents a major challenge for the prevention of personal injury and property damage. It is considered here the use of physical containment structures, made of HESCO – Bastion® modules, against the effects of war devices blasting, considering the pressure wave and fragments projection. During the reclamation of undetonated bomb, this type of protections reduces the vulnerable building distance (VBD) in order to avoid the forced eviction of thousands of people and damage to close facilities. The effectiveness of a protective structures against a detonation is investigated through numerical simulations that estimate their performance under extreme loads with Ls-dyna software. The results are being validated by experimental tests, organized in two phases, first small-scale tests, then real-scale ones. In the first phase three identical protective structures for geometry and instrumentation positioning are tested, while the second one has not yet been completed. The study focuses on performances of protective structures against overpressure and fragments projection arising from detonation and shows the vantage of using this type of protections. This project aims to deepen understanding of the physical phenomena involved in blast waves propagation and fragments projection in the area around a protective structure, following semi-confined explosions. Another goal is to develop protective structures with modular and standardized features to be applied to problems of different scale in terms of quantity of explosives and dimensions of the area to be protected.