Fire, Explosion & Blast

RTI has considerable experience with fire investigation, involving all aspects from origin and cause analysis to fire sciences, ignition scenarios, and fire protection assessments. Explosion & Blast are a unique form of catastrophic event often related to a pre- or post- fire situation, and can result from operations across industries, such as quarry and coal mining, building demolition, excavation, explosive welding, and metal forming.  While most explosions are brought about for a purpose, under planned and controlled conditions, the events that catch our attention are accidental or unintended explosions and often require an answer to the question: what caused it?

When faced with the need to determine the cause of an explosion or the extent of blast damages, RTI has the unique qualifications and experience required to provide the answers.  RTI’s team is comprised of engineers and scientists with experience in explosion and blast investigations supported by vast knowledge in the fields of chemistry, blast dynamics, structural response, and post-blast analysis.  RTI understands that it is critical to make use of a wide array of engineering and scientific disciplines when responding to a scene to evaluate the cause of an explosion.

Accidental explosions leave an indelible imprint on the accident scene that requires a very special skill set to interpret and understand. The high speeds of such events cause materials and objects to behave differently than expected. Forces generated produce results that can appear paradoxical. The sequence of events that leads to the catastrophe can otherwise seem ordinary and unremarkable.  Accidental explosions can occur as a result of numerous circumstances such as:

• Chemical and petrochemical plant operations
• Manufacture, storage, handling, and use of explosives
• Boiler explosions
• Fuel gas leaks in structures
• Cleaning and modifications to tanks used in storage and transport of volatile liquids
• Areas involving high concentrations of dust
• High pressure vessel failures
• Water and molten metal contact
• Manufacture, storage, and transportation of high vapor pressure or cryogenic liquids

Careful scene documentation is critical to determining the origin, and eventually, the cause of an explosion. The positions of structural members, distance and trajectory of debris, and the type of damage seen in the debris give clues as to the type of explosion and the magnitude of the explosive forces. Intense shock and blast will have a tendency to shatter objects in place, with little translation.

RTI is also well aware that deflagrations, such as gas vapor cloud explosions, will tend to leave objects intact yet can move them large distances and, many times, cause heat damage. Documentation of chemical processes is also crucial as this may reveal issues such as runaway reactions or the creation of unstable by-products with explosive attributes. For those reasons, early introduction of a post-blast specialist can be critical in establishing the facts surrounding an explosion scene before the information is changed or removed.