Proper design of protecting filters mitigates the effect of blast and shock waves and thereby makes such filters effective protection against both accidental and planned explosions. The main goal of the present study was to clarify the filter performance in reducing the loading on structures as well as reducing the strength of the transmitted shock. While most of the granular filters used for protection in the past were composed of sand or rock particles, in the present study the investigated granular filters were composed of small spherical particles. This was done in order to exclude the influence of the particle shape and to ease the numerical simulation of the filter performance. Moreover, in the simulations we neglected real effects such as particles movement and its rearrangement during the shock wave propagation and only discussion regarding the dependence of the granular filter performance on its length and composition is provided. Based on a comparison between experimental results and appropriate numerical simulations obtained for the pressure profiles inside and downstream of the filter it was found that the attenuation performance of the filter can be well predicted using a simple one-dimensional approach to the real, more complicated problems. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.