Numerical Investigation on Performance Optimization of Offshore Sandwich Blast Walls with Different Honeycomb Cores Subjected to Blast Loading

Abstract

As an important protective facility on offshore platform, the blast wall is of great significance in resisting oil and gas explosions. Honeycomb structures are widely used due to their unique deformation and mechanical properties under dynamic impact loads. The aim of this research is to develop an optimized design for an offshore sandwich blast wall with different honeycomb cores. The uniqueness of this paper is providing the quantitative optimization scheme for topological configurations and unit cell geometric parameters of honeycomb structures according to mass consistency and the proposed synthetic evaluation index of anti-blast performance. By using the numerical simulation software ANSYS/LS-DYNA, the CONWEP algorithm was first validated and then adopted to conduct the dynamical performance analysis of the honeycomb blast wall. For comparison purposes, simulating studies on a series of different blast walls were carried out by considering various influential parameters. According to different criteria, the blast resistance of the sandwich honeycomb structures was evaluated. It is found that the sandwich plate with concave arc honeycomb core has the best anti-blast performance compared to that of arrow honeycomb core and concave hexagonal honeycomb core. For the concave arc honeycomb structure, the geometric parameters such as concave angle and aspect ratio of honeycomb unit cell have great influence on the blast-resistance performance. Moreover, the concave arc honeycomb structure with positive gradient arrangement has better anti-blast performance than the negative one. The curved blast wall with the curvature of 1/20 achieves better anti-blast performance than the flat blast wall.