Mitigation of TNT and Destex explosion effects using water mist.

The effects water mist has on the overpressures produced by the detonation of 50 lb equivalent of high explosives (HE) TNT and Destex in a chamber is reported. The overpressures for each charge density were measured with and without mist preemptively sprayed into the space. A droplet analyzer was placed in the chamber prior to the detonation experiments to characterize the water mist used to mitigate the explosion overpressures. The impulse, initial blast wave, and quasi-static overpressure measured in the blast mitigation experiments were reduced by as much as 40%, 36%, 35% for TNT and 43%, 25%, 33% for Destex when water mist was sprayed 60s prior to detonation at a concentration of 70 g/m(3) and droplet Sauter Mean Diameter (SMD) 54 microm. These results suggest that current water mist technology is a potentially promising concept for the mitigation of overpressure effects produced from the detonation of high explosives.