Influence of homemade ammonium nitrate and fuel oil explosives charge shapes on blast wave propagation

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the influence of geometry of charges on the propagation of blast waves. Various shape charges (cylinder, sphere, irregular shape) were used in the field tests. The main type of explosive, homemade ANFO (Ammonium nitrate + fuel oil), was used as the most common used explosives in improvised explosive devices used in terrorist attacks. Characteristics of homemade and industrially made ANFO explosives are different. There were comparing charges of various types of industrially produced types of explosives and homemade explosive in the field tests. The blast wave propagation were investigated and compared. Keywords: ammonium nitrate and fuel oil explosives, blast pressure, blast wave, blast wave propagation, field test.

Numerical Analysis of the Blast Wave Propagation due to Various Explosive Charges

“…As far as the reflected wave must be described, the overpressure peak P + (in MPa) represents one of the key parameters to predict, and it depends on several explosion parameters. Based on research efforts of last decades, various closed-form analytical solutions can be found in the literature [54][55][56]. Many other influencing parameters are then involved in the empirical description of an expected blast wave which is confined and can further interact with the ground or with impacted surfaces [52].…”

“…3). For the numerical investigation reported in this paper, based on the selection of the past experimental outcomes, the attention was thus focused on five different explosives, characterized by mostly different features and thus expected wave propagation properties, as follows [54][55][56]:…”

“…In order to assess the numerically collected estimates of pressure peaks, some further efforts were carried out with the support of previous analytical outcomes [54][55][56].…”

“…In this regard, simplified analytical models can offer to designers an alternative tool for the description of the required blast waves [49][50][51][52][53]. However, in most of the cases, the real explosive event is only roughly captured, and field experiments still represent the most reliable approach for detailed investigations on the complex blast-related phenomena [54][55][56]. In this paper, a numerical study is presented for the blast wave propagation analysis.…”

Bombs and cocaine: detecting nefarious nitrogen sources using remote sensing and machine learning

“…Recently, there has been a noticeable shift towards using CAN in agriculture as AN is a detonatable oxidiser that can be used to construct simple yet highly destructive explosives (Brust et al, 2015;Djerdjev et al, 2018). Infamously, used by terrorists AN is inexpensive 6 and small amounts are needed to create explosives (Figuli et al, 2016), which have been used in numerous attacks (Anil Ananthaswamy, 2004;Henry Dodd, 2018). Subsequently, Ireland has banned the sale of AN based fertilisers (The Government Inspector of Explosives, Ireland, 2016), while the European commission prohibits the distribution of fertilisers containing more than 16% AN (ECHA, 2009).…”