Challenges in Blast Protection Research

With the arrival of industrial warfare, there has been a stable increase in explosion-related damages. Nowadays, explosives, mainly improvised explosive devices (IEDs), account for approximately 80 % of war injuries and death. Explosives produce systemic polytrauma across multiple body systems by simultaneous mechanisms.

Using explosives globally in the terror campaign has re-kindled international interest in blast research. The need to protect innocent civilians and peacemakers from such acts requires detailed knowledge of blast effective from explosives in difficult scenarios – as well as ways for preventing or mitigating damage.

Great developments have been made with mathematical models and computational methods to stimulate complex blast scenarios. Different tools available depend on solving the Euler conservation equations for mass, energy, and momentum and differ only in the description and the numerical approach to computation. The effective methods of blast propagation using 3D numerical meshes and using new CFD technologies, as well as the accessibility to better computer processing, have allowed investigating the complex interaction of blast and shock waves.

Despite the increased sophistication of the computation tools, some major challenges still exist in this field. It is thus obvious that researchers will have an acute interest in blast projection research, as numerous aspects in this domain need basic research to enhance the fundamental knowledge to sufficient levels. Though the essential complexity of real-world events in these spheres also needs an inclusive research method for implementing solutions and consequently, it has become the trend to have research associations across the spectrum of academic and industrial institutions.

Most of the IED cases concern explosive charged in very near proximity to the target and small-scale blast test are performed at close stand-off distances. The anomalies of blast features as a task of geometry at short stand-off have been addressed in previous researches.  Important differences in the explosion yield are initiated for cylindrical charges related to spherical charges, at even quite large scaled distances. It has noteworthy effects in protection research where it is a standard incidence to anticipate non-spherical charges as the risk and shorter application standoff distances.

There is an increased need for an active system. It is lucrative form the notion that it can be deployed on-demand and has positive influences for armored vehicles in terms of spatial or mass requirements. Irrespective of the apparent difficulties in the application of active blast mitigation systems in practice, numerous ideas have been explored. Additionally, active mitigation systems have lately been announced in armored vehicle systems.