Thin walled metal pressure vessels or pipes commonly used in industry can burst under certain circumstances: as a result, the pressure envelope may undergo large deformations, which may eventually lead to a rupture. The response of these vessels to static and quasi-static loads is relatively well-understood but their response to highly dynamic pressure loading conditions is not. This paper describes a numerical study of the response of circular metal plates to the dynamic loads produced by hydrogen-oxygen explosions. In this study, a range of dynamic responses and rupture criteria models are considered and compared with the results of experiments. The ability of MSC MARC software to model the rupture phase and, in some cases, the post-rupture phase (i.e., fragment production) is also discussed.

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