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GJESR RESEARCH PAPER VOL. 2 [ISSUE 9] OCTOBER, 2015

ISSN: - 2349283X

RECENT TRENDS IN BLAST RESISTANT CONSTRUCTION

Rohit Maurya [1], Shubhendu Vikram Singh [2]
Author [1] & [2] pursuing M.Tech (Geotechnical & Geo-environmental Engineering) from
Kamla Nehru Institute of Technology, Sultanpur, UP, 228118
(Mail Id rohitmaurya12ce@gmail.com, Mob-9897042913)

ABSTRACT
As growing no. of terrorist attacks since
last few years , we conclude that the effect
of these attacks especially bomb blast
attacks the causing loads on buildings and
other important structure is become a
matter to take seriously. We should take all
aspects and consideration to increase the
architectural and structural resistance by
advanced methods of designing, advanced
materials and procedure of implication.
Because of these are manmade disaster
thats why its exceptional cases. These blast
loads are actually dynamic in nature like
wind and seismic load, to measure and
control. So in this study we get some of the
latest
trends
in
blast
resistance
construction methods, material and codal
provisions.

INTRODUCTION
Due to terrorist attacks, there are large
amount of assets waste with fatal damage of
human life. Which become social panic to be
stop. Constructing structure total blast
resistant is not economical and reality
based. So new engineering knowledge can
improves the structure to decrease the
explosion effect.

NEED FOR BLAST RESISTANT STRUCTURE

Blast resistant structure is nowadays are
getting trendy around the world and it is
also getting aware in India as it was so
many attack that happened in India that
could prevent in presence of blast resistant
structure. There are approx.
LARGEST ATTACKS AROUND WORLD
1. Manhattan Attack

2. World Trade Centre Bombing 1993

3. The Wall Street bombing
4. 26/11 Mumbai Attack
5. The Okahlama City Bombing
6. 9/11 Attack (WTC)

RECENT TRENDS
As we need to look for different aspects we
have to go in the recent utilisation field of
blast resistant construction around the
world and different technologies which is
used for these construction. These are as
follows:
1. Ultra-high performance concrete and
reactive powder concrete slabs
2. Blast-proof masonry wall system and
assessment of coupling effects using a
TDOF model
3. Blast resistance of stiffened sandwich
panels with closed-cell aluminium foam
4. Impulse-resistant metal sandwich plates
5. Blast resistance of polyuria based
layered composite materials
6. Polymer composites as construction
materials (blast walls)
7. Innovative steel stud walls for blast
resistance
MATERIALS

USED
CONSTRUCTION TRENDS

IN

RECENT

In every few years theres a change in

different
construction
strategies
in
architectural, structural, environmental,
economical, blast resistant etc. So likewise
theres
respective
change
in
the
construction materials. There are several
variety of material are used in the recent
construction works. Which are as follows

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the general categories of construction

materials.
1. Explosion-Resistant Concrete
2. Shock-Proof Glass
3. Indestructible Plastic
4. Blast-Proof Fabric
5. Bomb-Proof Wallpaper

Figure 1- Blast resistant material

SEVERE EFFECT OF BLAST ON STRUCTURE

The blast explosions damage structures in
the following manner:
1. Shock and vibration can break nonstructural components (e.g., glass
window) far from incident. Create
fragments which can travel long
distances, causing facilities damage and
bodily injury.
2. Bend, break or displace load bearing
panels and beams, possibly causing
structural collapse.
3. Distort and possibly rupture pressure
vessel, valves, and instrumentation,
releasing hazardous (toxic or explosive)
material into environmental.
BASIC PRINCIPLE OF BLAST EFFECT
There are ways to blast happen which will
differential the working of severity to effect
on any construct structure. So what happen
is every blast will generate blast wave that
will propagate from blast point to nearby
structures as we see in this figure, it will
reflect from the ground in the air and
collide through the building structure in a

phase

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of

Mach

stem.

Figure 2- Propagation of blast wave

After that what we get by this explosive
effect on structure is find the general blast
wave pressure-time history, which as
shown.

Figure 3- General blast wave pressure-time

graph

BACKGROUND OF THE PROBLEM

An explosion or bomb blasting is becoming
the major issue to handle by engineering for
long time. Well first we have to know about
the blasting. It is a sudden release of energy
and generating large amount of heat and
overpressure in air. Generally in literature
the blast phenomena noted as the length
blasting, but is not the only cause. One and
only earliest published work in this is by
Hopkinson. In WWI and WWII increment of
explosives as an invasion tool and for
security purpose. So it is required to make
structure blast resistant.

TECHNOLOGICAL

TRENDS

IN

CONSTRUCTION

There are various type technologies are

came to fulfil the requirement for blast
resistant and seismic resistant construction.
These technologies are follows.
1. Adobe structures
2. Limestone and sandstone structures
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3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

Timber frame structures

Light-frame structures
Reinforced masonry structures
Reinforced concrete structures
Pre-stressed structures
Steel structures

VARIOUS

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Materials
These are the materials that are used in this
type of construction work as follows:
Ultra High Strength Concrete (UHSC)
Reactive Powder Concrete (RPC)

DESIGN METHODS OF BLAST

Ultra High Strength Concrete

RESISTANT

Well designing of blast resistant structure

date back to 1870 that determine various
blast loading pressure, overpressure, timewave graphs and tables etc. After a while
some year software come along to put
through the effect easy analysis , measuring
, calculating , simulating in different
conditions respectively growing the
technologies for better evaluating and
designing methods by national and
international authorities since 1950 to now.
Some of the methods names are
described here which will used in
designing.
1. Old Empirical Methods
2. Drift Controlled Blast Resistant Design
Method

There has been limited use of UHSC in

North America and it is developed in France
1990. This material consist of sand, cement
and silica flume in dense, low w/c ratio
(0.15) mix. Along with low permeability the
compressive strength of 18,000 psi to
30,000 psi can be achieved and it will
depends on the curing process. Ductility of
the material will be improved by adding
steel or fibreglass fibre 2% by volume, this
will change the use of mild reinforcing steel.
Nowadays tis material patented as Ductal
developed by Cafange.

ULTRA-HIGH PERFORMANCE CON-CRETE

AND REACTIVE POWDER CONCRETE SLABS

[1]
In this way construction method called
UHPC and RPC can improve strength of the
concrete and it will reduce self-weight and
member size with workability improved. By
this this material compressive strength
improves, sometimes 150MPa to 200MPa.
That type of concrete are needed where
high size building and long bridge are
constructed.
Also this used in the construction for blast
resistant design to prevent terrorist attack
and bomb blast according to (ASCE 1999,
Baker 1973). In 2009 the Code has been
modified of Korean building , Where in the
city of Seoul high rise loaded buildings at
least 50 and over from ground floor .
Nowadays with much interest of public this
way of construction of blast resistant design
concept has to be incorporated.

Figure 4-UHSC and Conventional Concrete

To create reference blast experiments,
some controlled explosions have been
conducted under ideal conditions. To relate
other explosions with non-ideal conditions
to the reference explosions, blast scaling
laws can be employed. The most widely
used approach to blast wave scaling is that
formulated by Hopkinson, which is
commonly described as the cube-root
scaling law. The scaled distance, Z, is
defined using the Hopkinson-Cranz's cube
root law as (ASCE 1999):
Where, Z is scaling distance; R is stand-off
distance from the target structure; E is total
explosive thermal amount of energy; W is
charge weight of equivalent TNT amount.

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The scaling distance is used for evaluation

of blast wave characteristics.
BLAST-PROOF MASONRY WALL SYSTEM AND
ASSESSMENT OF COUPLING EFFECTS USING
A TDOF MODEL [2]

Most of the existing buildings are not

designed for this type of blast loading.
Masonry wall sections normally turn out as
weak elements in security studies of urban
infrastructure. Fragments of building
components can be a major source of
hazard to occupants. Glass of windows and
materials of the walls may fragment and the
resulting debris may be propelled inwards
at high speed. A further threat could be the
loss of the building integrity.
An international consortium of small and
medium enterprises (SMEs) together with
two research establishments has developed
a product to retrofit masonry structures
with integrated window systems. A marketready product (TECDUR) was the result of
the project, which was successfully
completed in December 2009. This work
was part-funded by the European
Commission under its FP6 Research &
Technical Development Programme.
The retrofit system was developed to
withstand a scenario with a car bomb by
increasing strength, ductility and integrity
of the structure. Other research projects
have also raised these three parameters to
enhance a masonry wall against such an
extreme loading case. To reach the
properties, an elastomeric layer including
textile straps integrated in fibre-reinforced
wall panels (FRP) is attached onto the
existing masonry wall, see Figure 5 left.
Special glazing types for the window and a
good connection between the window and
the wall system allow a large viewport in
the masonry structure without failure of the
system. Figure 5 right shows a Blast wall
window
pane
after
a
shock-tube
experiment.

Figure 5-Masonry blast wall

BLAST

RESISTANCE
OF
STIFFENED
SANDWICH PANELS WITH CLOSED-CELL
ALUMINIUM FOAM [3]

Foam core sandwich panels have increased

the use in various field of construction, like
an example for that sacrificial blast walls,
side walls and in cargo containers and
boxes and various military construction
(Ashby et al., 2000). These panels has best
performance in case of blast as light, high
specific stiffness, moisture independency
and corrosive resistance. (Guru Prasad and
Mukherjee, 2000a and 2000b, Hanssen et
al., 2002a and 2002b, Qiuet al., 2003, Xue
and Hutchinson, 2003, Radford et al., 2006,
Sriram et al., 2006, Nemat-Nasser et al.,
2007, Bahei-El-Din and Dvorak, 2008,
Tekalur et al., 2008, Karagiozova et al.,
2009, Zhu et al., 2009, and Langdon et al.,
2010).
Effectiveness of stiffened metal foam
sandwich structures has never been
investigated.
(a) Stiffener configuration,
(b) Foam thickness,
(c) Foam density, and
(d) Standoff distance on the blast response.
Stiffened sandwich foam panel geometry
and material properties
The panels are square in shape (2 m 2m)
with steel sheets of 10 mm thickness on
each side. The back-sheet is stiffened by
stiffeners of 100mm width and 10 mm
thickness for all the ten stiffened
configurations with same materials (steel)
as that of the face- and back-sheets. Three
foam thicknesses, 50 mm, 100 mm, and 150
mm, are considered.
Figure 6 shows various configurations of
the unstiffened/stiffened sandwich foam

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panels The face-sheet and stiffened backsheet are made of steel considering elastic
plastic and strain hardening behaviour with
Youngs modulus, E = 210 GPa, Poissons
ratio =0.3, and density = 7,800 kg/m3 (Goel
et al., 2011). The static yield stress of steel
in the face and back-sheets is 300 MPa. The
steel face- and back-sheets along with
stiffeners are modelled using elastic-plastic
material model, i.e.

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core sandwich structure is available

commercially under the trade name
Navtruss. Each of the three types of
sandwich plate has a basic unit that is
repetitive
in
the
long
direction
(perpendicular to the plane of the crosssection in (Fig. 7b).

Figure 6- Stiffened sandwich panels

IMPULSE-RESISTANT
PLATES [4]

METAL

SANDWICH

Most structures designed to withstand large

blast loading on solid-wall plate and shell
components. The relative advantage of
clamped circular sandwich plates with a
tetragonal truss core is the over equal
weight of solid plates subject to identical
initial momentum impulses. Fluidstructure
interaction quite affects the momentum to
the sandwich plate relative to the solid
plate of similar weight. While the effect in
air is small, for blast waves transmitted in
water, the momentum to a metal sandwich
plate is substantially less than that
imparted to the solid plate of equal mass.
Three types of sandwich cores
Infinite plates of width 2L that are clamped
along their edges are considered, as
depicted
Schematically in Fig 7a.
Three core
geometries are analysed:
1. Pyramidal truss,
2. Square honeycomb,
3. Folded (or corrugated) plate.
Pyramidal truss core sandwich plates
have recently been manufactured for
relatively low cost applications, such as
decking for transport ships. Folded plate

Figure 7a, 7b, 7c-Type of sandwich plates

BLAST

RESISTANCE OF POLYURIA BASED

LAYERED COMPOSITE MATERIALS [5]

In military, naval and defence the

composite material have widespread
application. Due to the recent development
by the researcher in polymer based coating
on building and structure to increase the
resistive capacity and to find the minimum
amount of material required to withstand
the structure safely by observing blast
energy. By adding polyuria in composite
material makes so much complexity due to
nonlinear behaviour measuring by the
structure response.
Materials
E-glass vinyl ester composite (plainwoven
composite) the resin system used was Dow
Chemicals Derakane 510A-40. The glass

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fabric chosen was woven roving E-glass

supplied by Fibre Glass Industries (FGI).
The areal weight was 610 g/m2 (18
oz/sqyd) with an unbalanced construction
having 59% and 41% of fibres in warp and
fill directions respectively. Further details
about the composite material can be found
in figure.
Polyuria
Polyuria is a cross-linked amorphous
isocyanate monomer or pre-polymer and
polyamine curative. To be classified as a
polyuria, the compound must contain at
least 80% polyamine. There are two basic
types of polyuria: aromatic and aliphatic.
The EP JS has 20.34 MPa (2950 psi) tensile
strength, 350% elongation, 11.16 MPa
(1620 psi) modulus, and 87.5 kN/m (500
lb/in) tear strength.

Figure 8-Test polyuria sheets

POLYMER

COMPOSITES AS CONSTRUCTION
MATERIALS (BLAST WALLS) [7]

These are the separate structural parts

which will directly use in the construction
as wall for protection in buildings from
blast loading. These elements consist of
sandwich panels, added layers or hybrid
structure. The basic requirement of this
blast wall is that, it will observed energy
and have good resistance along buckling.
Continuous research of resins and fibre
gives us full performance and also the
ability to ass with other materials. It
implicate as a decorative facings, linings
and wall components.
Material
In this type of blast resistant construction
FRP blast walls are used, which is known as
Fibre
Reinforced
Polymers.
Fibrereinforced polymer panels have advantages

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of being relatively flexible, which will act as

an absorption mechanism from multi-phase
blast loads. Additionally, by filling the FRP
panels with native granular materials to
achieve the protection, the panels receive a
benefit of increased inertial resistance.

Figure 9-Polymer composites

Impact of application
Engineering:
The superior mechanical performance of
composite or hybrid composite components
means that the required level of protection
can be achieved with a lower volume and
weight of material.
1. Modularity of composite components
for quick and easy installation of both
temporary and permanent protection
facilities.
2. Composite components are highly
machine-able they can be drilled,
screwed or cut during installation in
field applications.
3. Composite panels are easy to repair in
the field

BOMB BLAST RESISTANT GLAZING [8]

The first test method that developed in this

area of bomb blast was ASTM F 1642,
Standard Test Method for Glazing Systems
Subject to Air blast Loadings, published in
1996. Through arena or shock tube testing
the test method which was applied to
glazing or glazing systems and provided a
means of establishing the air blast
resistance capacity of these materials. If an
opening was created in the glazing a
specimen was deemed to have failed
through which air blast pressure could pass
or if spall from the specimen penetrated an
aluminium foil witness panel placed twelve
inches behind the test specimen. The

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American Architectural Manufacturers

Association published their standard AAMA
510-06 Voluntary Guide Specification for
Blast Hazard Mitigation for Fenestration
Systems.

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The aim of this study to spread the

awareness of blast resistant building design
is to prevent the overall collapse of the
building and fatal damages of human life.
Despite the fact that, the exposer of the
explosion and the loads caused by it cannot
be bared perfectly, the most possible
scenarios will let to find the necessary
engineering advancement and architectural
solutions for it.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
Figure 10- Window, wall glazing

INNOVATIVE

STEEL STUD
BLAST RESISTANCE [6]

WALLS

FOR

SEB wall is ground breaking solution for

blast resistant construction. These walls
consists
of
CFS
studs
sheathed
(conventional) with composite steel /board
plate sheathing as we know SURE BOARD.
According to researcher Simpson Gumpertz
and Heger by his analytical program of SEB
wall, find out this has ability to resist the
high blast threats vehicle.

Figure 11-SEB walls

WORKING OF SEB WALLS
These walls primarily comprises of CFS wall
with full detailing to avoid unwanted
failures modes which sheathed on both side
of the wall by sheathing. This provide
sufficient structural benefits in lateral
bracing to improve the flexural capacity
under pressure loading. By the use of
strategically shear stiffeners in SEB wall
developed the angle correction and track.

CONCLUSIONS:

The author acknowledge the Dr N. K Saxena

Head, Department of civil engineering,
Kamla Nehru Institute of Technology,
Sultanpur, UP. And Prof. Anupam Verma
(Asstt. Professor) providing his guidance to
this work.

REFERENCES:
1. J.H.J. Kim, N.H. Yi, I.S. Oh & H.S. Lee
Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea J.K. Choi
& Y.G. Cho Hyundai Institute of
Construction Technology, Yongin, Korea
Blast loading response of ultra-high
performance concrete and reactive
powder concrete slabs 2010 Korea
Concrete Institute, ISBN 978-89-5708182-2
2. Kai Fischer, Werner Riedel, Julia Ziehm
Full-scale validation of a blast-proof
masonry wall system and assessment of
coupling effects using a TDOF model
14th International Symposium on
Interaction of the Effects of Munitions
with Structures- ISIEMS, September 19
23, 2011
3. Manmohan Dass Goel a ,Vasant A.
Matsagar b ,Anil K. Gupta Blast
Resistance of Stiffened Sandwich Panels
with Closed-Cell Aluminum Foam Latin
American journal of solids and
structures 11 (2014) 2497-2515
4. Zhenyu Xue, John W. Hutchinson A
comparative study of impulse-resistant
metal sandwich plates International
Journal of Impact Engineering 30 (2004)
12831305

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ISSN: - 2349283X

5. Srinivasan Arjun Tekalur , Arun Shukla ,

Kunigal Shiva Kumar Blast resistance of
polyuria based layered composite
materials Composite Structures 84
(2008) 271281
6. Ady Aviram Ph.D., PE, Ronald L.,Mayes ,
Ph.D., Ronald Hamburger ,SE ,SECB
Innovative steel stud walls for blast
resistance. Building Blocks , Structure
Magzine june 2014 .Pg,20-22
7. John Hoemann and Hani Salim, Robert J.
Dinan, Ph.D. Air Force Research
Laboratory. Fiber reinforced polymer
(FRP) panels for blast and fragmentation
mitigation. AFRL-RX-TY-TP-2008-4533
8. Block, Valerie, marketing specialist at
DuPont, Wilmington, DE, USA Bomb
Blast Resistant Glazing: Testing and
Standards. www.protectiveglazing.org
9. S. C. Dutta, R. Roy, Performance of
Seismically Designed Buildings under
Blast Loading. IJST, Transactions of
Civil Engineering, Vol. 36, No. C2, pp
149-166 Printed in The Islamic Republic
of Iran, 2012
10. WIKIPEDIA (Top 10 largest attack ever
)
11. UNIFIED FACILITIES CRITERIA (UFC)
DoD Minimum Antiterrorism Standards
For Buildings. UFC 4-010-01 change 1
October 2013 USA

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