As part of the Twenty-Eighth Explosive Safety Seminar held 18-20 August 1998 in Orlando, Florida, Dr. Frank B. Tatom presented a paper, co-authored by John W. Tatom, dealing with prediction of head injuries based on blast effects from an explosion.

Head injuries cause many of the fatalities produced by blast effects. In such injury predictions, the skull is more vulnerable to dynamic pressure than to overpressure. Dynamic pressure, resulting from the blast wave sweeping over the human body, causes the body to be swept along behind the wave at some displacement velocity. Injuries occur when the moving body encounters stationary, solid structures. The displacement velocities for various skull injury levels are known. Solving the motion equation for a body in a transient flow field yields the displacement velocity as a function of peak overpressure and impulse. Baker, et al. and Mercx previously attempted this computation, but in each case significant deficiencies occurred.

In Baker's analysis, both diffraction pressure and drag loading were computed, but the drag on the human body contained no adjustment for the object's motion. Thus, some of Baker's displacement velocities exceeded the particle velocity behind the blast wave, (a physically impossibility), resulting in very inaccurate curves at low peak overpressures (.4 psi).

In Mercx's analysis diffraction pressure loading was neglected, and in calculating the particle velocity behind the blast wave, Mercx used the ambient air density instead of the density behind the wave. These two deficiencies cause considerable inaccuracy at overpressures above ~10 psi.

In the current Improved Displacement Velocity (IDV) analysis, the effects of both diffraction pressure-loading and drag-loading were considered, with allowance for the body's displacement velocity, and with the correct air density used in the particle velocity equation.

Pressure-impulse diagrams were calculated based on all three methods for four displacement velocities (corresponding to four fracture probabilities). At low pressures the IDV curves closely match Mercx's while lying well above Baker's. Between 3 and 10 psi the IDV curves generally agree with Baker's, as Mercx's drift to the right. The IDV curves extend to pressures as high at 1000 psi, while Baker's curves end at ~10 psi, and Mercx's at ~100 psi. A comparison of results has revealed that the IDV model represents a bridge between the two earlier models, eliminating the major deficiencies associated with each.

The IDV model has been incorporated into the VASDIP 3.0 software.