Preliminary study of the structure and support forms to mitigate blast and impact loading effects

Abstract

Traditional design of structures to resist large impact and blast load, such as blast doors and guardrails is to increase the structural strength and stiffness. This will inevitably make the structure bulky, which not only increases the construction and material cost, but also the maintenance cost and operational efficiency. This project performs numerical simulations and experimental tests to investigate various structural and support forms to mitigate blast loading effects. The structure and support forms considered include spring and rubber supports of different stiffness, and sandwich panels with spring and air gap between the panels. Laboratory impact tests were carried out. The laboratory test data were used to calibrate the numerical models. The calibrated models were then used to simulate responses of these structures to blast and impact loads. It was found that both the sandwich structure and the structure with soft-supports performed well in mitigating impact loading effect.