Propagation behaviour of a hemispherical blast wave on a dome roof

Dome structures are often employed for industrial buildings and may be potential targets of terrorist attacks or accidental explosion. Military design manuals that are commonly used for structural design practice are based on the assumption that the blast wave reflects on an infinite or finite flat surface. These semi-empirical formulae ignore the blast wave propagation behaviour on a finite and variable-curvature reflector. The purpose of this research work is to estimate the blast load on dome structures during an external explosion. To achieve this objective, two laboratory-scale spherical dome structures were tested experimentally with 11 different blast cases. Following the experimental analysis, numerical parametric analysis based on ANSYS/AUTODYN was carried out to study the propagation and reflection on dome roofs. In addition, the performance of the Mach effect, reflection effect, diffraction effect, clearing effect and decay coefficient of the blast wave on the dome roof were investigated for different structural and explosion parameters. Based on this, a series of empirical equations are proposed to describe the temporal and spatial blast load distribution on a dome roof mounted on a supporting structure. This new load model described in the paper has been validated as it is able to predict the results of the experimental measurement on dome structures within experimental error.