Probabilistic analysis of blast–obstacle interaction in a crowded internal environment

Recent terror events such as the Manchester Arena bombing and Brussels Istanbul airport attacks featured improvised explosive devices detonated in crowded internal spaces. A blast wave that propagates presence of obstacles will have fundamentally different properties to those an unimpeded wave. Physical processes reflection, diffraction, superposition multiple fronts result highly complex situational-dependent loading characteristics which cannot be predicted using simple tools for predicting free-field parameters. The influence blast–obstacle interaction within environment has not yet been studied. This article uses computational fluid dynamics a probabilistic framework quantify obstacle density positioning on characteristics. Two mechanisms alter are studied: ‘channelling’ ‘shielding’. It is shown channelling effects localised increased near explosive, effect increases with density. Shielding cumulative distance from increasing Whole-domain functions used derive quantitative descriptors how they vary relative benchmark cases, view providing clear guidance development future predictive tools.