Transient response of a plate–liquid system under an aerial detonation : Simulations and experiments

• The unsteady flow equations for air blasts were solved with a home house CFD code.
• The simulation of the plate–liquid system under this blast load has been validated.
• Space and time scales of the CFD and structural models are made compatible.
• Experimental strains and pressures show good agreement with the simulations.

This paper presents a mixed numerical approach to model the blast waves generated by the detonation of a spherical stoichiometric mixture of propane and oxygen, impacting a plate–liquid system. The problem is split into two parts. The first calculation part relies on the modeling of the blast load and its propagation. Over-pressure distribution, in this part, is presented and reveals a very good level of agreement with experimental results. The time and space scales of the blast load data must be compatible with the plate–liquid system. This compatibility is ensured by an appropriate spatio-temporal interpolation technique. This technique is presented and its effectiveness and accuracy are demonstrated. The second part consists in modeling the response of the coupled plate–liquid system under the numerical blast load model. Experiments at reduced scale are carried out in two configurations in order to assess the effectiveness of this mixed numerical approach. Convincing results are obtained and discussed.