Blast-resistant structural steel connections

Abstract

This paper describes a study to assess the structural response and the current design procedures for steel connections under blast loads. The approach used in this study was based on adopting current blast resistant design procedures and advanced numerical simulations for assessing the behavior of modified seismic-resistant steel connections under blast-induced loads from internal explosions. 1 Introduction and Background Many buildings that could be targeted by terrorists are steel frame structures, and the behavior of the structural steel connections under blast loads is of great interest. Current design guidelines^ for structural steel connections have been developed based on experimental and theoretical investigations. However, recent reports^ on damage to steel structures due to seismic loads suggested a surprisingly poor performance of the steel connections, as compared to expected behavior^ Important design modification were introduced after extensive assessments of the observed damage. Nevertheless, these modified design details may contain similar deficiencies if the connections would be subjected to high rate dynamic loads, such as those associated with blast effects. Therefore, it could be very important to assess the behavior of such structural steel connects under blast effects, and to identify such possible difficulties.