Stochastic Representation of Interior Explosion Damages to Reinforced Concrete Structures

Abstract

Parking floors in buildings are of the most likely places for terrorist bombings. While terrorist attacks across the globe have increased remarkably in the last decades, it is important to recognize the behavior of existing structures against explosions and to find appropriate solutions to reduce the resulting damages. In this study, the failure probability of a 10-story reinforced concrete building subject to a vehicle bombing in random locations in the ground floor is evaluated. For this evaluation, reliability analysis of the building structure is conducted using a Monte Carlo simulation method and the results are obtained using a dynamic analysis of a finite element model and LS-DYNA software. The random variables considered herein are the location of the explosion, the time history of the blast loading, the gravity loads and the slab depth. In order to investigate the effect of the explosion location on the probability of failure, the building plan was first divided into three categories including the center, side and corner areas, then by randomly generating the explosion in each area, the probability of different level of damages to the building was calculated. Based on the results obtained in this study, the probability of failure in the central area of the plan is more significantly compared with those of the other areas. Finally, it is shown that by strengthening the central columns, the probability of heavy damages (damages greater than 55%) for blast loadings containing 600, 750 and 900 Kg TNT charge weights is reduced to 52%, 56% and 77%, respectively.