Injury Based Glass Hazard Assessment

Abstract : In a blast scenario, glass fragmentation is a major cause of injuries. Physical security assessments typically have defined the predicted hazard due to window failure by using the British Glazing Hazard Guide criteria, which is based upon the post-test observations of the distribution of fragments generated during an airblast test, and not the injuries that those fragments would cause. When compared to a recently developed glass penetration injury model, the British Glazing Hazard Guide criteria have been shown to be extremely conservative. By applying this glass penetration injury model, the hazard can be based on the severity of the predicted injuries due to individual shard impacts. The US Army Technical Center for Explosive Safety (USATCES), in conjunction with the US Army Corps of Engineers Protective Design Center, contracted with Applied Research Associates (ARA) to develop injury based glass hazard assessment tools using the Shard Fly-Out Model (SFOM) and Multi-Hit Glass Penetration (MHGP) Model. This paper provides a brief overview of the SFOM and MHGP models, followed by discussions of the PDA and HazL applications of these models.