Abstract
This paper presents two-step simulations to calculate the influence of blast-induced pressures on explosion-protection valves installed at the boundary between a protection facility and a tunnel entering the facility. The first step is to calculate the respective overpressure on the entrance and exit of the tunnel when an explosion occurs near the tunnel entrance and exit to approach the protection facility. Secondly, the blast pressures on the explosion-protection valves mounted to walls located near the tunnel inside approaching the protection facility are analyzed with a 0.1 ms time variation using the results obtained from the first-step calculations. The following conclusions could be derived as a results: (1) The analysis of the entrance tunnel scenario, P1, leads to the maximum overpressure of 47 kPa, approximately a half of the ambient pressure, at the inner entrance due to the effect of blast barrier. For the scenario, P2, the case not blocked by the barrier, the maximum overpressure is 628 kPa, which is relatively high, namely, 5.2 times the ambient pressure. (2) It is observed that the pressure for the entrance tunnel is effectively mitigated because the initial blast pressures are partially offset from each other according to the geometry of the entrance and a portion of the pressures is discharged to the outside.
