Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Blast Wave Mitigation in Granular Materials

One of the intrinsic properties of foams, porous materials, and granular materials, are their ability to mitigate the blast wave. The current research study investigates the capability of granular materials in the mitigation of blast wave both experimentally and numerically. In the experimental section, the explosion shock tube facility was employed to conduct a series of experiments. Sawdust and mineral pumice were used as granular materials in the sandwich panel core and their mechanical properties were obtained by performing quasi-static compression tests. Moreover, the commercial hydrocode AUTODYN was used to numerically simulate the process while the smooth particle hydrodynamics method (SPH) was employed to model granular materials. The obtained results indicate that mineral pumice leads to more mitigation of the blast wave compared to sawdust. Besides, using a low thick core made of granular materials is not considerably effective and using a high thick core leads to more mitigation of the blast wave.