Underwater Explosion in a Pool and Damage Assessment: A Global Approach From Far-Field to Close Range Available to Purchase

The concern of this paper is the study of the effects of the detonation produced by an underwater explosive device. This work applies in particular to the study of some industrial pools, filled with water and a few meters deep. These pools are generally build so as to ensure a certain watertightness, this function being obtained for instance by the adjunction of an internal liner, a few millimeters thick and made of stainless steel. Here, we focus on the possible loss of this function both by the damage caused to concrete and the perforation of the liner. Those damages could be either due on one hand to the local deformations related to the global structure response and on the other hand to the local effects of the explosion. The first aspect has been investigated previously, using in particular the so-called “Method of Images (MOI)” (F. Delmaire-Sizes et al, 2001). The second aspect only occurs when the device is in a sufficiently close range so that the pressures produced by the detonation can cause volumetric damage into the materials. The starting point of this second phenomenon is investigated in the paper on the basis of a numerical model for concrete under high pressure and high strain rates (T. J. Holmquist, 1993). The second phenomenon comes in addition with the first one. An example is conducted showing how numerical simulations for the local analysis, coupling Eulerian and Lagrangian computations, complete the previous global analysis.