Considering the actual needs of safety measures of explosion accidents or terrorist attacks in large complex buildings, numerical simulations of explosions in metro station are studied in this paper. A three-dimensional solid model of the metro station is created, and then the Eulerian three-dimensional multi -material parallel hydrocode PMMIC-3D which was proposed in 2014 (Ning et al., 2014) is used to simulate the explosion shock wave propagation laws in different conditions. In the simulation models, different reference positions were set to obtain the attenuation laws and the pressure -time curves of explosion shock waves. According to the numerical results, the range where shock waves can cause harm on human health was estimated based on the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and the U.S. DOD (Department of defense) specifications. The influences of the stairs and pillars in the metro station, the explosive quality and the setting of the wall materials were also taken into consideration. Besides, the shock wave propagation and pressure variation of these different conditions were discussed. In addition, some prevention measures against this explosion scenario were provided to reduce the damage on human and structures. (C)2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.