Mitigation of Accelerations Caused by Blast Loading Utilizing Polymeric-Coated Metallic Thin-Walled Cylinders

Abstract

This paper investigates various means for mitigating acceleration experienced by passengers in vehicles subjected to blast loading. In order to conduct this study, small-scale experimentation on simulated vehicles was used. The explosives designated for this research are exclusively buried in saturated sand, which will act as the loading media for the simulated vehicles. Test plates used in this study vary in both size and geometry. When necessary, simple plate geometries are employed to investigate various mitigation parameters. Ultimately, much of the experimentation was conducted on simplified scaled versions of vehicles likely to be subjected to attack. This paper focuses mainly on mitigation through crushing of thin-walled cylinders, but also investigates the advantages of applying polymeric coatings to these dynamically loaded structures. Piezoelectric accelerometers are used in conjunction with high speed videography to collect test data. It was ultimately found that vast benefits are realized from using thin-walled cylinders to mitigate high acceleration values experienced from a blast load.