The effect of span length to height ratio of reinforced concrete slabs on pressure-impulse diagram with multiple failure modes under blast loading

Abstract

In this paper, two loosely coupled single degree of freedom (SDOF) systems are used to generate pressure-impulse diagrams (P-I) with the flexural and direct shear responses of one-way reinforced concrete slabs subjected to blast loading. The effect of span length to height ratio in P-I diagrams is investigated. The numerical calculation results indicate that a slab tends to fail in a direct shear mode if the blast load amplitude is high but of short duration. It tends to fail in flexural failure mode if load amplitude is relatively low and duration is relatively long. And the failure of the slab might be a combination of shear and flexural damage in the dynamic loading region. Based on numerical results, different failure modes are got with different the span length to height ratio on the P-I diagrams. Results indicate that there is only shear failure mode in the P-I diagrams when L/h 24.89, there are two damage mode in the P-I diagrams with flexure failure mode and flexure-shear failure mode. When 10.9 < L/h < 24.89, there are three damage modes in the P-I diagrams: shear failure mode, flexure failure mode and flexure-shear failure mode.