Global damage evaluation of a dry storage structure subjected to postulated aircraft crashes

Abstract

This paper describes an assessment of vulnerability to global damage of a dry storage structure subjected to postulated commercial aircraft crashes. The vulnerability from plausible collisions of an aircraft is expressed by failed volume fraction in distribution curves obtained from an integrated deterministic and probabilistic approach. Nonlinear dynamic analyses are performed using smoothed particle hydrodynamics and finite element method to simulate the aircraft impact and the subsequent reinforced concrete damage. The response surface method, polynomial regressions and Monte Carlo simulation are employed for the probabilistic assessment. Failure probabilities of damage for three predefined response modes are estimated at side and upper impact locations. Resultant probabilities under these scenarios were relatively high and, thus, global resistance of the structure to withstand aircraft crashes is generally low. The outcomes of this study can be incorporated into quantitative evaluation within a probabilistic risk assessment framework and associated with further numerical analysis methodologies.