An assessment of architecturally appealing, semi-open shock mitigation devices

Limitations in space and city planning constraints have led to the search for alternative shock mitigation devices that are architecturally appealing. The purpose of this paper is to consider a compromise solution which consists of partially open, thick, bending-resistant shapes made of acrylic material that may be Kevlar- or steel-reinforced. Seven different configurations were analyzed numerically.

For the flow solver, the FEM-FCT scheme as implemented in FEFLO is used. The flowfields are initialized from the output of highly detailed 1-D (spherically symmetric) runs. Peak pressure and impulse are stored and compared. In total, seven different configurations were analyzed numerically.

It is found that for some of these, the maximum pressure is comparable to usual, closed walls, and the maximum impulse approximately 50 percent higher. This would indicate that such designs offer a blast mitigation device eminently suitable for built-up city environments.

Future work will consider fully coupled fluid-structure runs for the more appealing designs, in order to assess whether such devices can be manufactured from commonly available materials such as acrylics or other poly-carbonates.

This would indicate that such designs offer a blast mitigation device eminently suitable for built-up city environments.

This is the first time such a semi-open blastwall approach has been tried and analyzed.