Explosion Recurrence Modelling

This paper describes a recurrence law for explosions. The proposed recurrence law fits quite well to the historic explosion data in residential buildings as well as to the data on offshore installations in the North Sea. Generally quantified explosion risk assessment is performed for offshore installations, since it is believed historic data does not correspond to a specific installation and it may not be appropriate for use in performance based explosion engineering, which may in itself require realistic load description of explosion recurrence. The goodness-of-fit of the model for explosion occurrence data obtained using the quantified risk assessment method is also discussed. The paper then introduces the concept of performance-based design, which is an attempt to design structures with predictable performance under explosion loading. Performance objectives such as life safety, collapse prevention, or immediate resumption of operation are used to define the state of an installation following a design explosion. The recurrence law is then used to associate a level of explosion load to each limit state using a desirable level of probability of exceedance during the installations life time.