Direct simulations of outdoor blast wave propagation from source to receiver

Outdoor blast waves generated by impulsive sources are deeply affected by numerous physical conditions such as source shape or height of burst in the near field, as well as topography, ground nature, or atmospheric conditions at larger distances. Application of classical linear acoustic methods may result in poor estimates of peak overpressures at intermediate ranges in the presence of these conditions. Here, we show, for the first time, that converged direct fully nonlinear simulations can be produced at a reasonable CPU cost in two-dimensional axisymmetric geometry from source location to more than 500 m/kg^1/3 . The numerical procedure is based on a high-order finite-volume method with adaptive mesh refinement for solving the nonlinear Euler equations with a detonation model. It is applied to a real outdoor pyrotechnic site. A digital terrain model is built, micro-meteorological conditions are included through an effective sound speed, and a ground roughness model is proposed in order to account for the effects of vegetation and unresolved scales. Two-dimensional axisymmetric simulations are performed for several azimuths, and a comparison is made with experimental pressure signals recorded at scaled distances from 36 to 504 m/kg^1/3 . The relative importance of the main physical effects is discussed.