Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Engineering Structures journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/engstruct Probabilistic analysis of a simple composite blast protection wall system Assal Hussein a,b , Hussam Mahmoud a, ⁎ , Paul Heyliger a a Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, USA b Department of Civil Engineering, University of Diyala, Baqubah, Diyala, Iraq ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Free-air blast Simple blast wall system SDOF Monte Carlo simulation method Fragility analysis 3D-FEM ABSTRACT Terrorism has become a major challenge for the world. Terrorist organizations have raised their activities and their attacks in the last years using explosives. These attacks have left numerous numbers of victims, wreaked massive havoc to basic infrastructure, and increased global concern about the nature of these attacks. Blast wall protection systems can provide a required safety level to reduce injuries/casualties in different attack scenarios. Furthermore, installation and procurement costs could be greatly reduced using readily available materials. This paper investigates the performance of a composite wood-sand-wood blast wall by estimating the probability of exceeding a performance limit state for the wall for a suicide vest threat scenario. Fragility curves were devised using direct Monte Carlo simulations to predict the probability of failure of an equivalent simplified single degree-of-freedom system. The simplified model, calibrated to a 3D finite element analysis of the prototype wall, was used to determine the horizontal displacement at the back center of the wall. The analysis framework was developed to probabilistically evaluate the performance of the proposed blast wall in the presence of un- certainties in structural properties and blast load parameters under increasing intensity of the blast. Uncertainties in the random variables were modeled using appropriate statistical distributions. The analyses results show that under certain conditions the wall can provide the required level of protection for the con- sidered threat scenarios. 1. Introduction and background Explosions can result from a number of instances including but not limited to industrial accidents or terrorist operations. The former can be controlled by considering industrial safety requirements while the latter is far more challenging to control. Blind terror does not distinguish between a child, a woman or an old man. All these are targets for terrorists. Attacks of this nature inside cities targeting civilians and infrastructure have been on the rise in recent years, leaving a massive number of victims in addition to billions of dollars’ worth of losses. Lately, terrorists have been using innovative and dynamic attack plans to overcome security precautions and surprise security forces. Hence these attacks have become more complicated to prevent or delay in most scenarios [1,2]. One option to help reduce injury, death, and damage is to explore blast-resistant structural systems. Partial or full collapse of buildings from high explosive detonations is quite probable because most struc- tural systems are not designed to resist man-made hazards. Yet, it is an engineering fact that not all structures have to completely resist ab- normal loadings. A durable blast wall system, even if partially or fully destroyed in use, could attenuate the blast pressure and reduce the number of victims and the level of infrastructure destruction. Reliable and efficient structural failure criteria to predict the failure limit of a variety of structures should be available to engineers. These criteria can take a numerical probabilistic form to estimate the per- formance of structural systems through a lifetime of the structure. Performance-based design is a well-known approach for structures under natural hazards such as earthquake, wind, and fire [3]. While indeed the probability of having explosive incidents is relatively low as stated in the published literature [4], the probability will depend on the geographic location of interest along with additional conditions such as the political environment. Consequently, structural performance needs to be investigated under a variety of expected threat scenarios. Several protection strategies have been considered to mitigate blast loading [5]. Each strategy has limitations to be applicable for a specific threat sce- nario in addition to structural design conditions. In general, blast wave parameters and structural material properties are two of the most im- portant quantities of interest to determine structural performance of blast- protection walls or barriers. Performance-based blast design is determined initially based on deterministic parameters of structures when subjected to blast events [3,5]. This determination does not re- flect the reality of failure mechanisms of structures because of the https://doi.org/10.1016/j.engstruct.2019.109836 Received 24 May 2019; Received in revised form 29 September 2019; Accepted 18 October 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (H. Mahmoud). Engineering Structures 203 (2020) 109836 Available online 03 November 2019 0141-0296/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T
Probabilistic analysis of a simple composite blast protection wall system
Jun 14, 2023
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