Blast protection of steel reinforced concrete structures using composite foam-core sacrificial cladding

Abstract

The current investigation presents the effectiveness of a composite foam-core sacrificial cladding for blast protection of steel Reinforced Concrete (RC) structures using explicit finite element analysis in LS-DYNA. Fluid-structure interaction (FSI) methodology was employed to obtain the deformation and damage of steel-reinforced concrete columns under explosive impact. The purpose of this research is to demonstrate the effectiveness of an array of PVC foam cones used as the back layer of a composite sacrificial cladding to protect RC structures from close-in explosions. Simulations were carried out for several blast loading conditions by changing the explosive mass and the stand-off distance. The study was divided into two parts; first, the response of the RC column under blast loading was analyzed and, afterwards, the column was re-examined with the use of composite sacrificial cladding attached on its façade. Based on the analyses, it was proved that the foam conical-array configuration developed in this work that consists the rear layer of the composite sacrificial cladding, reduces the peak force applied on the concrete structure by 50% compared against the same protective configuration, where a uniform rear foam layer of the same thickness was used, whereas it is by 71% lighter than the conventional sheet core.