Mitigation

The research effort in mitigation will focus on basic science issues that help develop novel materials and structures to mitigate blast effects. Necessary is an underlying understanding of structural response to internal or external blast, fragmentation, or a combination of impacts such as simultaneous blast and fragmentation or blast and fire. Such understanding will be the foundation of modeling and will result in new designs and protocols for infrastructure protection. Projects presently supported do not encompass the entire scope of mitigation but have been selected to provide a focus in the initial stages of research.

designing and understanding the response of novel heterogeneous materials, including particulate, layered and functionally graded materials subjected to extremely high strain rate blast loading conditions.
designing and understanding the response of sandwich composite structures subjected to extremely high strain rate blast loading conditions at room and at high temperatures.
studying deformation and progressive failure events of structural steels subjected to coupled high strain rates and high temperatures associated with blast/fire loadings.
studying the response of structures that couple rigid body dynamics, material deformation and load transfer.
Structural response to blast waves from internal explosions, particularly non-ideal explosions.
Creating coatings for structural protection during blast.

2009 Blast Mitigation Workshop Report