Underground Structures Endangered by Explosion

Abstract

Because of the increasing prevalence of the threat of explosions endangering structures, the effective protection of parts of the civil infrastructure, such as embassies, government buildings, airports, bridges, tunnels, as well as the effect of gas explosions and other accidents of that kind against blast loads, has become a critical issue. Hence, it is of great importance to assess the dynamic impacts of explosives, which are required by some contractors or developers to reduce the risk of structural damage due to shock waves. In order to fulfill these demands, accurate computation is necessary and on the other hand, also new protective structures have to be suggested and verified. Effects of the explosion on the damage to tunnels, which are a typical example of closed spaces, are studied using Navier-Stoke’s equations describing movement in the air and discontinuous boundary elements solving the damage to the solid structure, i.e. the lining of the tunnel emerged in the rock environment.