Dynamic Response of Adjacent Buildings Under Explosive Loads

Abstract

The aim of this paper was to investigate the effect of an explosive load on the dynamic response of adjacent buildings including interaction due to collisions. Two buildings with different dynamic characteristics, to ensure one building behaves as a flexible and the neighboring one behaves as a stiff, are selected for the investigation. For such analysis, two different cases of adjacent buildings are modeled: (1) no interaction between adjacent buildings, sufficient separation gap exists, and (2) interaction between adjacent buildings, insufficient separation gap exists. The nonlinear viscoelastic model is employed to capture the induced force due to collisions. The influence of variations of a number of factors such as (a) separation gaps, (b) natural periods, and (c) peak over static pressures is considered. The response of buildings is studied under blast loads due to a source of explosion near the flexible building. The analysis is repeated using a source of explosion near the heavy and stiff one. Numerical simulations for estimating the dynamic response such as adjacent building structures are carried out using a developed MATLAB code based on the finite element toolbox CALFEM. Displacements and pounding forces due to collisions are determined. The displacements obtained from the analyses of adjacent buildings with insufficient separation gap are compared with those obtained assuming sufficiently separated buildings. It is found that explosive loads can cause excessive displacements leading to collisions between insufficiently separated buildings. Such collisions significantly affect the induced dynamic response of the adjacent two buildings, especially the flexible one.