Determination of blast pressure distribution around cylindrical shape based on numerical simulation of explosion

Explosion is considered as the most hazardously event in petrochemical facilities and offshore structures. In these facilities, pressure vessels are very important because their explosion may result in damage to other modules. In practical design, external blast load is applied to one side of pressure vessels as uniform load.In this paper we try to propose more realistic distribution to conform experimental results. This paper includes validation of Eulerian domain capability in finite element program ABAQUS to carryout uncoupled Eulerian Lagrangian analysis .The results show good agreement between Eulerian capability and experimental results in locations that do not have high turbulence effect, but in points where turbulence effects and vortexes are increased, error in numerical model is larger. Also, this paper shows that the method which is usually used to apply blast loads to cylindrical materials has a great error in comparison with numerical simulation and experimental results. Thus, in this paper is presented a blast load distribution which can be used in future research and industrial designs for vertical shape or horizontal shape of cylindrical materials with a variety of different diameters.