Review of Methods for Calculating Pressure Profiles of Explosive Air Blast and its Sample Application
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Abstract
Blast profiles and two primary methods of determining them were reviewed for use in the creation of a computer program for calculating blast pressures which serves as a design tool to aid engineers or analysts in the study of structures subjected to explosive air blast. These methods were integrated into a computer program, BLAST.F, to generate air blast pressure profiles by one of these two differing methods. These two methods were compared after the creation of the program and can conservatively model the effects of spherical air blast and hemispherical surface burst.
The code, BLAST.F, was used in conjunction with a commercial finite element code (NASTRAN) in a demonstration of method on a 30 by 30 inch aluminum 2519 quarter plate of fixed boundary conditions in hemispherical ground burst and showed good convergence with 256 elements for deflection and good agreement in equivalent stresses of a point near the blast between the 256 and 1024 element examples. Application of blasts to a hypothetical wing comprised of aluminum 7075-T6 was also conducted showing good versatility of method for using this program with other finite element models.