Explosion Forensic Analysis

Accidental explosions have resulted from numerous sources, including fuel/air mixtures, reactive chemicals, combustible dusts, bursting pressure vessels, and high explosives. These impulsive events call for specialized forensic analysis methodologies because the damaging loads exist for only short durations (see Figure 1), making conventional static analysis inappropriate for backing out possible root causes. An important part of an explosion forensic analysis is to use damage indicators from the surroundings to determine the strength of the blast wave. These damage indicators, such as deflections in metal panels, deformed structural members, debris throw, or broken windows are analyzed using methods that range from semi-empirical pressure-impulse based damage correlations, to single-degree-of-freedom analysis, to dynamic nonlinear finite element analysis. The final result from analyzing many indicators is a magnitude for the explosion source energy, which, in turn, often leads to an understanding of what caused the explosion.