Damage and responses of two asphalt pavement structures under blast loads: A numerical simulation

Abstract

The explosion accidents are threatening the service functionality of pavement structures, which puts forward new requirements such as multi-hazard resistance and resilience. Although the widely used asphalt pavement structure is vulnerable to blast loads, its dynamic behaviors under blast loads are still unclear. This research mainly focused on the damage and responses of two asphalt pavement structures, one of which was conventional asphalt pavement, and the other was the anti-blasting asphalt pavement structure with the reinforced concrete layer. The numerical simulation method, which was validated based on a real blast test, was proposed using Abaqus code with appropriate material models and simulation procedures. The finite element models of two pavement structures were built. Under various blast loads, the damage contours and dynamic responses of different pavement structure components were investigated. It was found that the total damage areas of two asphalt pavement structures were grew by 2.26 and 3.19 times, respectively, as the blast loads increased from 100 kg TNT to 2000 kg TNT. The slope of pavement structure was extremely sensitive to the changes in blast load. The proposed anti-blasting pavement structure could reduce the damage area by up to 20 %, but it would be invalidated under particularly destructive blast loads. These findings could be helpful for the further design of an anti-blasting pavement structure.