Abstract
Damage to building load-bearing members (especially columns) under explosions and impact are critical issues for structures, given that they may cause a progressive collapse and remarkably increase the number of potential victims. One of the best ways to deal with this issue is to provide values of safe protective distance (SPD) for the structural members to verify, so that the amount of damage (probability of exceedance low damage) cannot exceed a specified target. Such an approach takes the form of the so-called safe scaled distance (SSD), which can be calculated for general structural members but requires dedicated and expensive studies. This paper presents an improved calculation method, based on structural reliability analysis, to evaluate the minimum SSD for steel columns under dynamic blast loads. An explicit finite element (FE) approach is used with the Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) method to obtain the SSD, as a result of damage probability. The uncertainties associated with blast and material properties are considered using statistical distributions. A parametric study is thus carried out to obtain curves of probability of low damage for a range of H-shaped steel columns with different size and boundaries. Finally, SSD values are detected and used as an extensive databank to propose a practical empirical formulation for evaluating the SSD of blast loaded steel columns with good level of accuracy and high calculation efficiency.
Highlights
Crowded buildings such as schools, shopping venues, stadiums, transportation infrastructure and public locations are well-known attractive targets for terrorist attacks
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The normal Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) have been fitted to the observed points for each case related to a specified column length, to convey a better understanding of presented concepts in Section 4 and calculating the probability of low damage for points other than the observed points, if necessary
Summary
Crowded buildings such as schools, shopping venues, stadiums, transportation infrastructure and public locations are well-known attractive targets for terrorist attacks. There is a need to identify areas that may be potentially at risk and to take preventive measures to improve their safety and security In this regard, securing the perimeter of structures or buildings using landscaping or barrier methods is one of the valid risk reduction options recommended in the literature for protecting buildings against terrorist attacks, including vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices [2]. These secure barriers must be installed at the minimum required stand-off distance from a structure, in order to minimize the damage probability of primary structural elements and the risk of progressive collapse. Some studies have been performed to investigate the SPD and SSD of structural elements under blast loads
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