Blast Mitigation in Confined Spaces by Energy Absorbing Materials

Tests have been performed with different explosives balanced as well as underbalanced with respect to Oxygen at different loading densities 0.1 - 4 kgm3 with different additives e.g. water, glycol and foam to get a basis for a better understanding of the possible mitigation effects on stored ammunition. Water has a mitigational effect on the blast wave from an explosion. This surpression of the pressure works for both balanced and underbalanced agents and seems to be independant of the loading density. The quantitative effect is depending on the way the water is distributed but the tests show that the effective charge size can be reduced with more than 50.