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As part of a series aimed at introducing institutions across the UK that perform work related to Shock Waves and Extreme Conditions (SWEC), Drs Adam Dennis and Dain Farrimond shall discuss work performed at the University of Sheffield on understanding and predicting Blast Loading in Urban Environments.

Following the Beirut Port explosion on August 4th 2020, over 200 people lost their lives, upwards of $15B in property damage was caused, and an estimated 300,000 people were displaced. As a result, a global response emerged to spatially delineate and understand the cause of the resultant injuries and damage caused by the blast. When a blast wave propagates in the presence of obstacles, the loading differs substantially from that of a free-air blast due to highly non-linear physical processes such as reflection, diffraction, coalescence of multiple shock fronts, shadowing, and confining effects.

While Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations can be used to capture the required event complexity, uncertainties persist due to scarce experimental validation data. Replicating large-scale events is often challenging and costly, and so leveraging blast scaling laws to gather empirical data from gram-scale charges provides a useful alternative.

Throughout this talk, the authors discuss how small-scale explosions can be used to develop insights into city-scale explosive events. Key findings are then used to critically interrogate the suitability of existing numerical solvers for assessing urban blast. This is presented alongside the development of Fast Running Engineering Models (FREMs) that will benefit from the findings made in both aspects of this work.

Organised by the IOP Shock Waves and Extreme Conditions Group

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