Experimental Investigation of Aluminum Foam Lined Suppressive Shield Containment Vessels Abass Braimah 1, *, Mohamed Elshafey 2 , Abd El Halim O. Abd El Halim 3 , and Ettore Contestabile 4 1 Assistant Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Carleton University, 3432 Mackenzie Building 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, Canada K1S 5B6 2 Assistant Professor, Civil Engineering Department, Canadian International College, Cairo, Egypt E-mail: melshafey@connect.carleton.ca 3 Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, Canada K1S 5B6, E-mail: a_halim@.carleton.ca 4 Adjunct Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, Canada K1S 5B6, E-mail: econtest@rogers.ca Received on 04 Sep 2011, Accepted on 18 Mar 2012 ABSTRACT Manufacture, transport, and storage of dangerous goods, especially energetic materials, in Canada and around the world pose serious challenges to explosives regulators and inspectors. Currently siting of manufacturing and storage facilities are in accordance with quantity- distance principles designed to mitigate effects of accidental explosions. The land requirements to satisfy these principles are imposing financial burdens on the explosives sector. This paper presents an experimental program designed to investigate the effectiveness of suppressive shield containers in reducing the blast pressure outside of the container while eliminating fragments thus reducing the distance requirement for the stored amount of explosives. Several suppressive shield panels including aluminium foam-lined panels were tested to study their effect on blast pressure and impulse. In addition computational fluid dynamics techniques were used to study suppressive shields effects on blast environment. The results show reduction of the incident peak blast pressure by 60% and the incident impulse by 58%. The aluminium foam-lined suppressive shield panels attenuated the peak incident pressure and impulse by 80%. International Journal of Protective Structures – Volume 3 · Number 2 · 2012 193 *Corresponding author. E-mail address: abass_braimah@carleton.ca.