Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Structural Dynamics, EURODYN 2011 3337

Leuven, Belgium, 4-6 July 2011

G. De Roeck, G. Degrande, G. Lombaert, G. Müller (eds.)
ISBN 978-90-760-1931-4

Computational Modelling of Damage Behaviour of Reinforced Concrete Slabs

Subjected to Blast Loading
Z. M. Jaini1,2, Y. T. Feng1
1
Civil and Computational Engineering Center, Swansea University, SA2 8PP Wales, United Kingdom
2
Department of Structures Engineering, University Tun Hussein Onn, 86400 Johor, Malaysia
email: rizuan@uthm.edu.my, y.feng@swan.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: Modelling the damage behaviour of reinforced concrete structures due to blast circumstances are still one of the
most difficult challenges in the field of computational modelling. Blast loading can be categorized as short duration with high
magnitude rates which is able to make many structures failure and subsequently collapse. The demand to profoundly understand
the dynamic response and damage behaviour of reinforced concrete structures under blast loading is essential to provide an
adequate level of safety and serviceability. The damage of structure under blast loading is depend on the amount of the energy
released, the duration of blast pressure and the propagation of blast waves. Blast loading has two phases, positive and negative
where the negative phase is almost neglected in many studies. In the present study, both phases of blast loading are considered.
The loading is determined based on Kinney and Graham equations composing the incident overpressure, the reflected
overpressure and the dynamic windblast. The calculated blast loading is compared with that obtained from the US Army
Standard, TM5-1300 and several other methods. The blast loading is modelled as non-uniform pressure and its interaction on
reinforced concrete slab is modelled using the finite-discrete element program, Elfen. The finite element method is incorporated
with a rotating crack approach and discrete elements to model damage behaviour and the post-failure of dynamic responses.
Meanwhile, the modified Mohr-Coulomb and Von-Mises criteria are applied for the material properties of the concrete and steel
reinforcement respectively. The comparison between the numerical and experimental results shows a favourable agreement in
term of scabbing and spalling damages. The post-failure dynamic responses are still ambiguous and need further investigations.

KEY WORDS: Damage behaviour; Blast loading; Reinforced concrete slab; Finite-discrete element method.

1 INTRODUCTION distance. This study is hopes to gain better understanding

The demand to profoundly understand the damage behaviour
and dynamic responses of concrete structures under blast
loading has lead many researchers to the numerous
investigations in both of experimental and numerical studies.
The high energy released and short duration of blast loading
make the observation of the damage behaviour during an
explosion is unlikely to conduct. The similar situation happens
when the conditions of post-failure dynamic responses are
carried out by experimental study. Until recently, there has
been no possible way to use the high speed camera to estimate
the ascertaining fracture size and its velocity. These reasons
with expensive cost and tedious of experiment study treated to
the application of numerical analysis as effective and
economic platform to study the damage behaviour of
reinforced concrete structure inflicted from high loading rates
of blast phenomenon. However, there are several main
challenges regarding the modelling of damage behaviour
where involves the constitutive material law, the loading
equation of state and the damage modelling. The damage
behaviour and post-failure dynamic responses such as fracture
and fragmentations are absolutely engaged with the transition
condition from continuum to discontinuous elements.
Generally, the finite element method cannot be used alone in
the damage modelling, thus another approach should be
adopted as well.
The main objective of the present study is to numerically
investigate the damage behaviour of reinforced concrete slabs
when subjected to blast loading at relatively close standoff
about damage behaviour in conjunction with wave velocity
propagation. The local and global damages are of particular
interest, with special attention are paid to the scabbing,
spalling and fracture. This study is also develops a rational
procedure for blast analysis and its modelling which can be
followed easily by an engineer.
Blast loading resulting from the release of contained
pressure is a transient loading that applied dynamically as one
half cycle of high amplitude. This kind of extreme loading can
be classified as subsecond short duration which the magnitude
of loading related to the standoff distance, weight of
detonation and contact between source and structure [1,2].
Although the duration of blast loading is thousand times
shorter than a small scalar earthquake, the pressure intensity
produced is ten times larger. It is common practice that the
consequence in terms of damage response is estimated from
the amount of energy released, the duration of blast pressure
and the propagation of blast waves which also realistically
fully reckoned on the surrounding conditions.
A number of analytical and numerical methods for
predicting the blast loading have been developed since the last
century. An accepted set of a standard blast analysis
introduced by Kingery and Bulmash (1984) has been
implemented in the computer program ConWep [3,4]. The
ConWep program is widely applied for spherical air burst and
hemispherical surface burst problems. It has been confidently
accepted as an accurate tool to analyse blast loading.
However, some issues regarding the practical application of
Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Structural Dynamics, EURODYN 2011 3338

the program in engineering works are still in conflict. Smith
and Herington (1994) developed blast loading analysis which
fits to the experimental data [5,6]. On the other hand, the
empirical method for predicting blast effect on structures is
also developed as standardized in several manuals such as
TM5-830 and the latest UFC-3-340, the US Department of
Defence (2008) superseding the Army TM5-1300. Recently,
the appropriate analysis of blast loading on structure has been
rapidly developed with advance of computational fluid
structure interaction. Especially, the Jones-Wilkins-Lee (JWL)
state of equation is also used where the deviatoric stress
update may be split from the pressure update. The JWL
primarily dependent on the amount of energy released by a
detonation in the form of blast wave and standoff distance.
The blast wave after an explosion contains most of the energy
generated by the explosion and propagates quickly in a
spherical or hemispherical form away from the source. Thus,
the value of blast pressure is a space and time dependent
function. There are numerous model equations proposed to
calculate the overpressure such as Brode (1955), Newmark
and Hansen (1962), Henrych (1979) and Mills (1987). The
calculation of the peak overpressure is based on the formula
introduced by Kinney and Graham (1985):
 
808 1 +  
4.5

  =
equation of state defines the blast pressure as:

 =  1 −  −
 +
!1 +    !1 +    !1 +   
  


(2)

  0.048 0.32 1.35

(1)

 1 −  −   + where  is the peak overpressure,  is the ambient pressure

  
typically taken as 101kPa and  is the scaled distance
where  is hydrostatic pressure,  is the specific volume, is
the specific internal energy, and ,
, ,  and  are all
calculated based on the Hopkinson (1915) and Cranz (1926)
scaling laws in Equation (3). The formula is based on the
material constants. The values of the constants for many effective standoff distance of the detonation and the
common explosives have been determined from dynamic
$
equivalent trinitrotoluene (TNT) mass of explosive:

=
experiments and are available in many sources [7, 8, 9,].

The JWL equation of state is normally used for modelling
pressure in application involving elastic models, isochoric
plasticity and visco-plasticity models. Therefore, the JWL
equation cannot be used with compressible models like Mohr-
Coulomb, Drucker-Prager, Rankine and Rotating Crack
models. However, the appropriate application of the JWL
%&
(3)
The incident overpressure occurs after the explosion wave
hits the structure. The magnitude of this overpressure can be
calculated using Equation (4) which is well established as

( − ( ( − (
equation associated with the compression material criterion Friedlander’s time profile:

' =  1 −  
 −*  
has been developed. The influence of a hydrostatic stress
component of failure on the certain compression criterion
makes it possible to be employed associated with the JWL
equation of state. Currently, commercial software such as
Abaqus and Ls-Dyna provide the access to this application.
Zhou et al. [9] have successful combining the JWL equation
with the Drucker-Prager criterion in order to analyse the
scabbing and spalling behaviours, but the results are limited to
erosion failure. Similarly, Wang et al. [10] have used the
Karagozian-Case to model reinforced concrete slabs under
close-in detonation and obtained the damage behaviour based
() ()
(4)
The Friedlander’s equation is a function of time where ( is
the time of arrival of the blast wave to the structure which is
calculated from two conditions, the standoff distance and the
respect to the blast wave is () , the positive phase duration
velocity of the wave-front. Another important quantity with
pressure is greater than the ambient pressure, and * is the
which is the amount of time after an explosion when the
incidence. ( and () can be calculated by Equations (5) and
decay coefficient and its value depends on the angle of

(6) while the decay coefficient, * , is simplified in quadratic

on continuum failure. As an alternative to model damage
behaviour with considering the fracture failure, a mapping

$
method is incorporated to define the blast pressure time formula in Equation (7):

( =
6 + 
history profile. Although this technique is conservative, it is

+ ! '
(5)

7
capable of saving the overall computational cost and produces
the accurate results.


0
980%
/& 1 +  
0.54
2 BLAST LOADING ANALYSIS
() =
 &  1 !  
Blast pressure usually has two phases, positive and negative. (6)
1 +   1 +   1+ 
0.02 0.74 6.90
In most studies, the positive phase becomes more important,

* =   + 3.7 + 4.2
while the negative phase is ignored. In a normal condition, the
total pressure of the negative phase is less than the total (7)
ambient pressure even though its duration is longer than the

2 is predicted by using an empirical formula in Equation (8),

positive phase. In the current study, both positive and negative At a zero angle of incidence, the peak reflected overpressure,
phases are taken into account. Nevertheless, the negative

 and the ambient pressure,  that in principle is only valid

phase is only considered for the static overpressure while the
dynamic windblast is oscillating in the positive range.
Analysis of blast pressure involves the calculation of the
peak overpressure, the incident overpressure, the reflected
overpressure and the dynamic windblast. All parameters are
derived by Rankine (1870) in terms of the peak overpressure,
for ideal gas. As a result, when reflected pressure is high, the
prediction from this equation is much lower than experimental
result. The reflected overpressure is always greater than others
Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Structural Dynamics, EURODYN 2011
as the wave propagates when the condition of air surrounding
7 + 4
is compressed.
2 = 2 
7 + 
(8)
To find the reflected overpressure at various time steps,
Friendlander’s equation is also adopted.
pressure, 3 of the accompanying windblast which is defined
Apart from the static overpressure, there is also a dynamic
based on a model equation recommended by Sangeon (2006).
This formula assumes that the windblast moves together with
the reflected overpressure just behind the incident
overpressure.
' 
0.357  
14.7
3 = 14.7 4 5

1 + 0.143  ' 
(9)
14.7
For the current problem, where the detonation is weighted
0.5kg and located 100mm above the slab surface, from the
empirical chart in the US Army standard, TM5-1300, the peak
reflected pressure can be estimated as 215MPa. In the
numerical analysis, the recorded peak reflected overpressure
is 218MPa. This shows that the numerical analysis agrees well
with the empirical prediction. The comparison of the incident
overpressure and reflected overpressure calculated using
Kinney and Graham with ATBlast, TM5-1300 and Henrych
formula are shown in Figures 1 and 2.
Figure 1. The incident overpressure in scaled distance, .
Figure 2. The reflected overpressure in scaled distance, .
3339
3 FINITE-DISCRETE ELEMENT METHOD
The combined finite-discrete element method is recently
developed to model the problems of solid mechanics where
failure, fracture, fragmentation, collapse or other type of
extensive material damage are expected [11,12]. The method
combines the finite element approach and the discrete element
method to model the transition from continuous to
discontinuous of solid bodies. In contrary to the finite element
method which has been well established to predict the
behaviour of various materials to a high degree of confidence,
the discrete element method is relatively new. The discrete
element method is originally developed by Cundall and Strack
(1979) in which an assemblage of rigid deformable bodies and
the contact among the bodies can be identified and
continuously updated during the entire deformation process
[13,14]. Fracture is absolutely can be modelled using the
discrete element method.
The combined finite-discrete element method has been
generally developed by Owen et al. [15,16] in order to
simulate the mine blasting and geomechanics problems. This
method has been further developed to various irregular and
deformable particles in many applications. In the complex
manner regarding extensive fracture and fragmentation due to
an explosion, Munjiza et al. [17,18] developed an interesting
solution approach using the finite and discrete element
methods. In the present study, a commercial software Elfen is
employed to model reinforced concrete slab subjected to blast
loading. Elfen is a combined finite-discrete element program
which can model intact behaviour, interacting along existing
discontinuities and it has been successfully applied to many
engineering problems involving multi-fracturing phenomena.
3.1 Material Constitutive Model
Several issues of material model under high loading are
highlighted in this section. The modelling of damage
behaviour in Elfen is achieved by employing a fracture energy
approach controlled by designated constitutive fracture
criteria. The modelling combines three main non-linear
fracture mechanics principals: i) the isotropic Mohr-Coulomb
model, ii) the compressive fracture, and iii) the Rankine
Rotating Crack.
Concrete material shows pressure dependent strength
properties and has various state of stress which produces
different failure modes. Therefore, a time-independent elasto-
plastic theory is often used to describe the stress-strain
relationships of concrete where the material is linearly elastic
up to the yield point and then it becomes perfectly plastic
[19]. The simplest material model which incorporates this
pressure dependency and is able to predict the stresses on the
failure plane is the Mohr-Coulomb material model. The Mohr-
Coulomb yield criterion is a generalisation of the Coulomb
friction failure law and is defined by:
6 = 7 − 89 :+;< (10)
where 6 is the magnitude of the shear stress, 89 is the
pressure, 7 is the cohesion and < is the friction angle. The
Mohr-Coulomb strength criterion is the combination Mohr
failure envelope, approximated by linear intervals over certain
stress ranges. In principal stress space the yield surface is a
six-sided conical shape. The conical nature of the yield
Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Structural Dynamics, EURODYN 2011 3340

surface reflects the influence of pressure on the yield stress

and the criterion is applicable to concrete problems. The a) b)
strength of Mohr-Coulomb is written as:
=>? = @8
− 8& − 8A = 0
where 8
and 8& are the principal stresses while @ and 8A are
(11)

stresses are ordered in descending order, 8

≥ 8 ≥ 8& . This
defined in Equations (11) and (12) respectively. The principal

means that the Mohr-Coulomb criterion consists of only two

1 + sinφ
planes in the principal stress space.

@=
Figure 4. a) Conventional Mohr-Coulomb tensile yield

1 − sinφ
(12) surface, and b) The Modified Mohr-Coulomb criterion in
principal stress space.

8A = 27√@ (13)

However, when the cohesion, 7 is greater than zero, the

Mohr-Coulomb model predicts a tensile strength which is
larger than the tensile strength observed experimentally. This
discrepancy can be mended by introduction of a tension cut-
off in the form of complete Rankine tensile corner as opposed
to a hydrostatic cut-off [20]. The Rankine tensile corner
introduces additional yield criteria defined by:
8H − 8I = 0 J = 1,2,3
(14)
where 8H refers to each principal stress and 8I is the tensile
strength or tension cut-off, which is the highest tensile stress
allowed in the material. Although at present no explicit
softening law is included for the tensile strength, indirect
softening does result from the degradation of cohesion
according to the following criteria:
8I ≤ 71 − MJ;∅/7OM∅
(15)
This ensures that a compressive normal stress always exists on
the failure shear plane. The Rankine part of the criterion is
taken to be associated whereas the Mohr-Coulomb part is non-
associated [20].
The combination of these criteria is usually referred to as
the modified Mohr-Coulomb criterion [21]. The model
requires inputting the following parameters: modulus of
elasticity, the Poisson’s ratio, angle of internal friction and
cohesion. The latter two parameters serve to define the yield
condition based on stress-independent component of shear
strength and a stress-dependent component. The angle of
dilation must also be specified. Figure 3 shows the yield
surface of the modified Mohr-Coulomb. In Figure 4, this
criterion can be seen in the principal stress space.
3.2 Crack and Fracture Formation
Concrete as a quasi-brittle material is represented as a
continuum from which cracking virtually occurs during
deformation process. The crack then propagates to all
directions when the material strength is degraded. Before
experiencing any failure, the material will remain in
homogenous elastic state.
The commonly accepted Rotating Crack model is used to
simulate crack formation within a continuum description
under tensile conditions. In this approach [22], cracks are
initiated when limiting tensile stress is reached, after which
the material follows a softening or damaging response
governed by an appropriate relation. The fracture in such
quasi-brittle material such as concrete is generally related to
anisotropic phenomenon [23]. The formation and growth of
cracks within a quasi-brittle material occur in directions that
attempt to maximize the strain energy density [24]. For this
purpose, the extension Rankine and Rotating Crack models
have been developed for computing the tensile failure. The
initial failure surface for the Rankine Rotating Crack model
can be defined by tensile surface failure as shown in Figure 5.
In mathematical aspect, it is represented by:
P =IQ∆I 8H −IQ∆I =I = 0
(16)
where 8H are the principal stress invariants and =I is the tensile
strength of material.

Figure 5. Yield surface for Rotating Crack and Rankine

Models.

After the initial yield, the rotating crack formulation

represents the anisotropic damage evolution by degrading the
elastic modulus in the direction of the major principal stress
invariant.
899 = 1 − ST99 (17)
Figure 3. Yield surface for the modified Mohr Coulomb.
Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Structural Dynamics, EURODYN 2011 3341

where  is the damage parameter and T99 is the local stress at 4 MODELLING AND SIMULATION
SIMULA

energy, UV
the locall coordinate system associated with principal stresses.
4.1 Model Description
The damage parameter is dependent on the fracture energy

WXA
which is denoted as: The model of reinforced concrete structure is based on the

UV =
scenario of a simply supported two-ways slab where the
S (18) experimental study was conducted by Zhou et al. [9] in
University of Western Australia. The weight of the slab was
The Rankine model uses the same softening model as approximately 325kg. The reinforced concrete slab has
illustrated in Figure 6, however itt is applied within a dimensions of 1300mm
0mm length, 1000mm width and 100mm
continuum material formulation rather than by following the depth. There are respectively 7 and 13 one way longitudinal
direction of cracks or micro-cracks
cracks at Gauss point
point. steel reinforcements with a diameter of 16mm located at the
top and bottom. The concrete is discretized with unstructured
4-noded
noded solid tetrahedral finite elements,
elemen with 76049 elements
and 29576 nodes in total. The concrete volume is divided to
three layers as die, wall and billet with each volume being
defined by similar material parameters. The steel
reinforcements are spatially meshed as 2-noded2 Simo
(nonlinear larger strain) beam elements. The beam elements
are formulated to represent
present bending formations. Figure 8
shows the dimension of reinforced concrete slab and the finite
element mesh with typical element size of 20mm.
A perfect bond is assumed between the concrete and steel
reinforcements. In the model, the steel reinforcements are
located along the boundaries of the tetrahedral elements. In
Figure 6. Softening for Rankine and Rotating Crack models
models.
order to fully consider the three-dimensional
three effects,
especially the interaction of wave velocity between the
In the combined finite-discrete
discrete element method, damage and
concrete
te and steel reinforcements, the whole finite element
fracture patterns are obtained when the topology of the mesh
model was used. This is also to avoid the boundary surface
is updated by insertion of discrete fracture in the failed region.
effects that may influence the dynamic response and damage
A discrete fracture is introduced when the tensile strength in a
behaviour. The reflecting boundary is assumed in the
principal stress direction reaches zero and is oriented
surrounding edges of slab, but the supported boundary has a
orthogonal
nal to this direction. The fracture can be inserted
lower reflection compared to free surfaces.
surfaces
along failure plane (intra-element
element fracture) as can seen in
Figure 7, resulting in creation of new node and formation of
new element in finite element system or along the boundaries
(inter-element fracture)
re) of the existing elements [12,24]. This
evolution process is continued until either the system comes to
equilibrium or up to the time of interest. During the damage
and fracture fragments, the condition of contact between finite
elements and discrete elements
ements is complied with the penalty
method based on contact surface deformation theories [11].
The behaviour of post-failure
failure is coupled to the tensile
softening response and the discrete element contact
parameters are introduced to control the element sepa separation
and assuring the maintenance of energy balance during the
discrete discontinuous transition period. The parameters a)
included the contact damping, the contact field, the values of
normal and tangential penalties, size of buffer zone for contact
detection
ion and the limit size of the element after fracturing
fracturing.

b)
Figure 8. a) The dimension of reinforced concrete slab, and b)
The
he finite element mesh.
mesh

4.2 Blast Modelling

In many blast modelling, the pressure time history profile of a
blast loading on a structure is usually simplified to triangular
a) b) c) shape and applied uniformly. Blast wave travels away from
Figure 7. Crack insertion procedure; a) initial state, b) through the source of the explosive outward in a radial shape. This
element, or c) along element boundary
boundary. radial shape of blast wave induces different arrival times and
Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Structural Dynamics, EURODYN 2011 3342

peak values of overpressure on the structure. The blast
pressure load distribution thus becomes non-uniform due to
different arrival times and the peak overpressure of the blast
wave. In this study, the area with less than 45 degrees of
incidence angle is assumed to have a uniform pressure and a
fully reflected peak pressure is applied [4], while the area
exceeding 45 degrees is imposed a non-uniform face loading
with a variation of load amplitude across the slab surface. The
interaction of blast pressure on the slab surface is represented
by contours and blast pressure time history profiles. As a
mapping method is employed, the slab surface is mapped onto
15 areas, each area having a different blast pressure time
4.3 Reinforced Concrete Slab
The concrete material considered in this study is of 50MPa
grade and the fracture energy is taken to be 75N/m to
100N/m. For the steel reinforcement, material non-linearity is
assumed in the form of a bilinear curve where the yield stress
is 560MPa and the ultimate stress is 630MPa. The material
properties were used in modelling for the concrete and steel
reinforced are specified in the Table 1 below:
Table 1. Material properties of concrete and steel
reinforcement

Young’s modulus, S (GPa)

Concrete Steel
history profile. The area that mapped as one contour is based

Density, Y(kg/m3)
upon the similarity either the time of arrival or the positive 30 210

Poisson’s ratio, Z
phase of the reflected overpressure. The various blast pressure 2314 7800
time history defined in Elfen is shown in Figure 9 below.
0.2 0.3

In the present work, the modified Mohr-Coulomb and

Von-Mises are applied for concrete and steel reinforcement
respectively. Because of the Mohr-Coulomb criterion in
concrete can only produce continuum failure which are based
upon cohesion, friction angel and dilation angle, the combined
Rankine and Rotating Crack failure models are introduced to

behaviour is dependent on the tensile strength, 8I and fracture

control tensile fracture failure. Therefore, the damage

Figure 9. The blast pressure time history (positive phase) for
the different area on the reinforced concrete slab.
The blast pressure is imposed only to the surface area with
less than 80 degrees of incidence angle. Beyond that, only an
ambient pressure is considered. For comparison, an empirical
formula proposed by [25] is also adopted to calculate the area
that is imposed by the blast pressure. Blast pressure is defined
as three-directions of face loading as assumption that the
incident overpressure travels from the explosive source
vertically to the slab surface. When acting on the surface, the
energy, UV as well.
In addition to the data required for the Rotating Crack
model, rate dependency is introduced through the use of the
tensile strength with respect to the strain rate. Since the blast
loading is applied over a significant shorter of time, the strain
rate of concrete is between the range of 0 to 1×104s-1 and the
tensile strength between 3.54×106 to 60.18×106N/m2. The
strain rate effects are derived from the experimental and
dynamic increase factor. For more accurate stiffness definition
in the Mohr-Coulomb, the hardening properties are introduced
where the non-associated flow rule is defined as the
relationship between rates of plastic shear strain and plastic
volumetric strain. It has the difference between the friction
angle and the dilation angle whereas the cohesion remains
constant. The plastic properties and hardening properties for
concrete is shown in Table 2.
Table 2. Non-linear properties of concrete

[ (MPa) < (°) \ (°) 8I (MPa) UV (N/m)

reflected overpressure propagates in both vertical and i) Plastic properties
horizontal directions while windblast blows horizontally on
entire slab surface. 15 45 15 3.54 100
In the present investigations of fracture behaviour, the blast

T [ (MPa) < (°) \ (°)

pressure is modelled by two conditions to study the damage ii) Hardening properties
behaviour in conjunction with wave velocity: i) the positive
phase only, and ii) the positive-negative phases of blast
pressure. However, the problem in blast modelling occurs 0.0 15 45 15
when involves the negative phase. It is found that the duration 0.03 15 45 5
of negative phase is longer than positive phase almost three to 1 15 45 0
five times. This was produce unstable condition in Elfen
program at particular time step. The modified blast pressure The Von-Mises criterion is applied to the steel reinforcements.
time history with presence of the ambient pressure is This rate independent model is implemented in form of
employed to solving the problem, assuming that the ambient nonlinear properties that define the hardening of material as it
pressure is always constant during the loading period. On the undergoes plastic straining from value of 0 up to 0.0223s-1
other hand, the effect of heat ignition, debris trajectory and with tensile strength only in the range between 2.5×108 and
mach-reflected overpressure are ignored. 6.3×108N/m2.
Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Structural Dynamics, EURODYN 2011 3343

5 RESULTS AND ANALYSIS the scabbing zone increases. Figures 11 and 12 illustrate the
The blast pressure results in different stress states in different fracture and post-failure at the time instants from 0.5msec to
regions of the slab. During the interaction between the blast 5.0msec along the mid-cross section of span direction.
pressure and the slab in the duration of about 0.25msec, the
damage is localized as the scabbing occurs on the back
surface of the slab. When the time reaches 0.5msec, the t=0.5msec, δ=9.23mm
scabbing fully develops in a crater with a maximum depth
50mm and a damage area approximately 480×300mm2. Both
models of positive phase and positive-negative phases have t=1.0msec, δ=20.05mm
shown a similar damage pattern at the bottom and top region
of the slab. The maximum deflection of the reinforced
concrete slab, δ at this time is around 9.23mm and 9.31mm for
t=2.0msec, δ=33.00mm
the positive phase and positive-negative phases respectively.
The deflection is measured at 1/3 span from the support.
Meanwhile, the spalling damage area is about 160×140mm2
for both models. The comparison of these numerical results t=3.0msec, δ=43.83mm
with the experimental results from [9] at time 0.5msec shows
a favourable agreement as depicted in Figure 10.

t=4.0msec, δ=49.97mm

t=5.0msec, δ=52.35mm
Figure 11. The fracture and post-failure caused by positive
a) Experiment: Spalling b) Experiment: Scabbing phase of blast loading.

t=0.5msec, δ=9.31mm

t=1.0msec, δ=20.13mm

a) Positive phase: Spalling b) Positive phase: Scabbing t=2.0msec, δ=33.24mm

t=3.0msec, δ=49.97mm

a)Positive-negative phases: b) Positive-negative phases:
Spalling Scabbing
Figure 10. Experimental results and numerical results for
spalling and scabbing at t=0.5msec.
At the time instant of 1.0msec, fractured fragmentations are
observed separating from the concrete body. When the time
increases, the behaviour of the slab is dominated by a global
flexural response, although further scabbing and spalling are
still possible. A concrete plug in the pattern of a conical
frustum is formed by inclined cracking through the thickness
of the slab. As concrete plug moves downward, the damage at
t=4.0msec, δ=54.27mm
t=5.0msec, δ=58.52mm
Figure 12. The fracture and post-failure caused by positive
and negative phases of blast loading.
Fracture behaviour at time from 0.5msec to 1.0msec for the
positive-negative phases model is more realistic as the
separation elements or crater occur at the bottom region of the
slab and propagate toward the upper region. Currently, the
size distribution of the fractured elements cannot be clearly
Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Structural Dynamics, EURODYN 2011
quantified because it is highly depend on the mesh size and
the discrete element contact factors. However, the condition
of fracture in conjunction with the wave velocity is described
in Figure 13. Steel elements do not experience any facture
behaviour as steel is ductile material in the range of elasto-
plastic. Therefore, as the wave propagates from steel
reinforcement to concrete area, the wave velocity rapidly
decreases. The billet is measured at the bottom part of the slab
where scabbing damage happens because of the tensile waves,
which generate tensile cracking when the material tensile
strength is reached. At the billet part, the finite elements are
transformed to discrete elements during the fracture processes
at the constant high wave velocity. The high wave velocity is
probably caused by the ejection of material from the top
surface which mainly experiences compression failure at high
pressure. Fracture at the wall region is observed at the middle
layer of the slab, where element separation is formed
approximately after 1.0msec. The fracture at the wall region
begins when the concrete plug occurs resulting from the depth
penetration of the inclined crack and the combination of the
compression and tensile waves. It is observed that the wave
velocity of the positive-negative phases model is almost along
the time lower than the positive phase model.
Figure 13. The relationship of fracture propagation and the
wave velocity.
6 CONCLUSIONS
In this study, the modelling of reinforced concrete slab
subjected to blast loading is carried out by a non-linear
dynamic finite-discrete element method. Blast loading is
modelled using a mapping method adopted two conditions,
the positive phase and the positive-negative phases. A suitable
dynamic model has been developed using the modified Mohr-
Coulomb and Von-Mises criterion models for concrete and
steel reinforcement respectively. The damage and tensile
fracture are developed by employed the Rankine Rotating
Crack model. Comparison of the numerical results with the
experimental results shows that the numerical simulation
gives a reliable prediction of blast pressure and the damage
behaviour, but is still uncertain for the fracture. The predicted
fracture patterns become more realistic if both negative and
positive phases of blast pressure are applied instantaneously.
3344
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This study is fully supported under SLAI scholarship, MOHE
and University Tun Hussein Onn, Malaysia.
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