Impacts of IEDs

Blast driven ball bearings in IEDs: interaction with gelatine

Recent work by Qi et al. (2020) and Langdon et al. (2022) involved collaborative work between the University of Cape Town and The University of Sheffield in developing an “idealized IED” comprising a cylinder of PE4 plastic explosive and a half-embedded ball bearing.

The novel experimental arrangement enabled key parameters to be measured, gaining insight into the flight and damage processes of the ball bearing: the average velocity and impact velocity of the ball bearing, and the relative contributions to impulse from the ball bearing and the blast wave, and cracking damage from the recovered ball bearings. These parameters were used to validate a numerical model of the blast/impact event, and show how the flight and damage are affected by the aspect ratio of the explosive charge.

We are currently undertaking further collaborative work on the interaction of the ball bearing and blast wave with a human surrogate material.

For more information or collaboration, contact Prof Genevieve Langdon (Genevieve.Langdon@sheffield.ac.uk).