Investigation of Fragment Impact and Blast Shock Wave on Window Breakage

A natural gas explosion in East Harlem, NY destroyed two buildings and caused breakage of windows on a building across the street from the explosion. The equivalent TNT charge of the explosion is estimated and used to develop an explosion-fragment model (EFM) of the explosion event. The EFM is employed to investigate the potentiality of the window breakage as being caused by fragment impact or by the blast shock wave itself. Sections of the building facade predicted to be vulnerable to a combination of fragment impact and the shock wave are found to correlate with slightly higher rates of window breakage than sections predicted to be vulnerable only to the shock wave.