Technical Evaluation of the Limits of the Hazardous Areas as to Projections

Abstract : The French safety regulation on explosives gives fixed limits to the different hazardous areas as to projections. These fixed limits are under certain circumstances inadequate. This situation led the SNPE to develop a technical approach for the delimitation of the hazardous areas. This approach can be summed up in two parts: Elaboration of technical criteria for the limits of the different hazardous areas as to projections such as conditional probability of reaching person by hazardous fragments; Development of tools to predict fragments range and densities by computer codes and methods to assess experimental data like initial velocity of primary fragments, Gurney and Mott's coefficients, etc... On one hand, this paper presents the technical criteria adopted by the SNPE, and on the other hand, the computer code DENSECLA. This software calculates the fragments densities, and then, evaluates the limites of the different hazardous areas through the conditional probability of lethality.