Trilateration of blast wave arrival time: an inverse method for determining explosive yield and position

This paper details the development of a rapid inverse approach to determine the yield and location of an explosion through trilateration of empirical laws for blast wave arrival time. A rigorous sensitivity analysis of measurement uncertainty is first performed. From this, a probabilistic framework is proposed that utilizes Monte Carlo sampling of datasets to mitigate the effects of the variability and uncertainties typically present in blast events. Subsequently, the trilateration method is successfully applied to two existing datasets. Analysing well-controlled small-scale laboratory experiments, charge mass is predicted within 6.3% of the true yield, and position within 3.65 charge radii of the true centre. Social media footage of the 2020 Beirut explosion is then used to assess performance against data collected under in-field conditions. The predicted yield of 0.52 kt_{[Formula: see text]} shows good agreement with the literature, and charge position is predicted to within the radius of the crater. Trilateration is shown to be able to rapidly and reliably determine explosive yield and centre, despite large levels of sensor noise. The sub-second computation time of this approach offers the possibility to better model and predict the damage and injury patterns immediately after an explosion, facilitating more effective disaster response planning.This article is part of the theme issue 'Frontiers of applied inverse problems in science and engineering'.