Assessment of the throwing effect of material fragments resulting from the detonation of explosive materials

Abstract

The modelling of the throw effect of material fragments following the detonation of explosive materials with a harmful effect on the human component and/or nearby industrial/civil targets is based on the quantification of the impact of the throwing speed and mass of the material fragments. Models developed to generate trajectory calculations for ranges of mass, launch angles and launch velocity based on Monte Carlo simulations are sensitive to the predetermined ranges assigned to each trajectory variable, requiring long time intervals to run the simulations at the time of analysis and IT resources to match. Following the production of an explosion-type event, thousands of individual fragments characterized by their own mass and velocity parameters can be generated, resulting individual energy values that can be taken into account in a quantitative risk assessment, by grouping them into ten distinct classes, thus: Class 1st represents fragments with the highest kinetic energy and/or mass, and class 10th represents fragments with the lowest kinetic energy and/or mass. The paper will highlight the ten distinct classes of the kinetic energy parameter, with the maximum, average and minimum values for each class, as well as the average mass for each detached fragment associated with the energy classes.