Blast mitigation by water

The water mitigation concept can be exploited in the design and operation of new and existing military facilities exposed to the threat of internal explosions, like ammunition handling and storage sites. It offers the potential for major savings in the cost for explosives safety of ordnance facilities from accidental explosions. In addition, the concept can be applied to the temporary storage of ammunition like is the case in Out-of-Area operations, e.g. during peace keeping missions. In 1997, a co-operative research project was defined between FOA (The Swedish Defence Research Agency, since 2001 named FOI) and TNO-Prins Maurits Laboratory (PML, recently referred to as TNO Defence, Security and Safety) in The Netherlands, aimed at investigating the physics of water mitigation and to formulate instructions and standards of how to use water barriers. FOA/FOI was responsible for studying the effect of scaling laws and the influence of cased versus uncased charges, whereas TNO-PML was responsible for studying the influence of loading density, and the amount and location of the water for the mitigation effectiveness.