Large scale blast emulator based explosive gas loading methods for structures and recent advances in experimental studies

This paper discusses the methods of utilizing acetylene-air mixture explosion for blast loading realization and its related experimental implementations, as well as the numerical simulation on comparison of dynamite explosion and acetylene-air mixture explosion based on LS-DYNA nonlinear explicit dynamic codes. The characteristic parameters of shock wave, such as over pressure and arriving time with respect to propagation distance, are compared for different blast cases. Then, the blast heat based equivalent principle and modified index of scale distance for gas explosion is proposed from the point view of energy conservation. The analysis results show that the Euler algorithm is useful for the numerical simulation of shock wave propagation caused by acetylene-air mixture explosion, and the results are in good accordance with the prediction results through different empirical formulations. With the increasing of propagation distance, the relative error between the two explosion methods is shown to be decreased. As a result, the explosive acetylene-air mixture can be used to conditionally realize the explosion effect of traditional chemical dynamites, such as TNT explosives. The results establish a theoretical foundation for using such explosive gas material in generating shock wave loadings based on the large scale blast emulator facility. At last, some preliminary test results on Tension Membrane structure, scaled steel frame structure and model energy resources structure are summarized based on this blast test method