Performance based investigation on the construction of anti-blast water wall

•We carried out nine experiments to study the blast mitigating effects of water wall.•A fine and validated FE model of anti-blast water wall was built in LS–DYNA.•Blast mitigating characteristic of water was revealed by numerical and test results.•Empirical formulae of key parameters for constructing water wall were derived.•A design principle was proposed to construct water wall in protective engineering.

Improvised explosive device (IED) such as roadside bomb may be used in terrorist actions, which possess a threat to public safety. To mitigate the casualties and economic loss it might cause, protective technique has drawn more and more attention from the research and engineering community. Anti-blast water wall as one of water barricades, might be effective in mitigating the explosion effect due to its advantages of low cost and easy to construct etc. In this study, nine in-situ experiments were carried out in the explosion chamber to investigate the mitigating efficiency of explosion by using anti-blast water wall. Numerical models were also developed to simulate the testing by using commercial software LS-DYNA. The numerical model was calibrated and verified by the overpressure time histories recorded in the tests. In addition, parametric studies were carried out to investigate the influences of water/charge distance and height of water wall on the blast mitigation performance. Empirical formulae were derived based on the experimental and numerical results. Based on the equivalent static load method, design principles were proposed for the optimization of anti-blast water wall against blast loadings.