Impulse saturation in metal plates under confined blasts

The phenomenon of impulse saturation is revisited for metal plates subjected to confined blasts through a combination of experiments, numerical simulations, and analytical modeling. Internal blast experiments were performed on the fully-clamped aluminium square plate where its transient inelastic (mode I) response was recorded using three-dimensional digital image correlation (DIC). A methodology was proposed to idealise the confined blast induced pulse-pressure through a validated numerical model. An analytical model was developed to predict the transient central deflection of the aluminium plate under the idealised pulse pressure, where the predictions were shown to be in reasonable agreement with the DIC measurements. Parametric studies were performed to elucidate the effect of standoff distance and confinement geometry on the saturation duration, saturated impulse and deflection. It was found that both the pulse-shape and saturated impulse strongly influence the saturated deflection during internal blast loadings.