A Numerical Analysis for Blast Pressure and Impulse from Free-Air Burst

Abstract

A Numerical Analysis for Blast Pressure and Impulse from Free-Air Burst Computational fluid dynamics;Near-field detonation;Verification;Validation;Numerical analysis; The need to accurate quantification of blast pressure loading in the near field is important because the focus of security design of critical infrastructure, buildings and bridges is for near-field detonations. Incident and reflected pressures for near-field detonations are very difficult to be measured by commercially available pressure transducers due to the high pressure and temperature, which requires a verified and validated computational fluid dynamics code to reasonably predict the near-field pressures and impulses. This paper presents numerical studies to verify and validate a CFD code for calculations of incident and reflected overpressures and impulses. The near field is emphasized and recommendations for mesh sizes to optimally simulate the near-field detonation are provided.