Blast-Resistant Design of Steel Structures

In earlier periods, the blast-resistant structures were only employed for military-based structures, however, threats of bomb blasts on important buildings are increasing dramatically (Cormie, Mays, and Smith 2009). The attack on twin towers of the USA provoked the chaotic situation in the whole world regarding the safety of other publicly important buildings. This, in turn, riveted attention to avail blast resistant concepts in other important structures as well. In case of explosion, the death of residents of the building is not only spawned by the blast and "primary projectiles" triggered to movement by the blast, but also by the "secondary projectiles" which are detached from the building due to the blast (US 7406806B2.

pdf n.d.). To minimize this effect, the research community modified the single-layered facade of a building to double-layered facade systems, where insulating or energy absorbing fillers can be placed between the two panels (Ngo et al. 2015). The outer layer performs a uniform distribution of blast pressure to the inner layer.

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Blast protection can be enriched by using the proposed energy connector between the energy absorbing fa?ade and structure (refer Fig. 1). This arrangement reduces the peak load transferred to the structure in a controlled manner and eventually prevent the catastrophic failure of the load-bearing members. Furthermore, this connector can prohibit the rigid fixing of the fa?ade to the building for better protection. The propounded energy connector is the assembly of mild-steel metal plates on the faces and polyurethane foam as the core element. The metal plates and foam absorb energy by plastic deformation and compression respectively.

In such an arrangement, the metal plates not only help to absorb energy but also act as a confinement member for foam and withstand the gravity load of the fa?ade.

Since several decades, the metal tubes have been used excessively for energy assimilating process (Abramowicz and Jones 1986). This has also been supported in recent studies which state that kinetic energy of crash can be engrossed by energy structures in a considerable amount by progressive and controllable plastic deformation modes (Asanjarani, Dibajian, and Mahdian 2017; K?l??aslan 2015). Similar motto has had been the benchmark for many theoretical, experimental and numerical studies related to energy absorbing structures. The history of energy absorbing structures (EAS) dates back to 1959 when the theoretical expression for obtaining axial crushing load of thin-walled (TW) circular steel tubes without considering load path was obtained by Alexander (Alexander 1960). In early 1990s, with added improvements, effective models for computing progressive crushing of prismatic columns and cylinders were developed (Wierzbicki et al. 1992). An analytical formulation for the auguring of bending collapse and crumpling movement along with energy absorption (EA) capacity was trotted out by Kim and Reid (Kim and Reid 2001). Abramowicz (Abramowicz 2003) focused on crushing process of thin-walled structures (TWS) along with instances for designing EAS. Despite demonstrating well mechanical properties, traditional circular metal tubes have higher initial crushing force(Gupta 1998) and it is difficult to maximizes their efficiency(Jiang and Yang 2009), but better improved geometry can make the results better. Findings on pyramidical, triangular, rectangular, square, hexagonal, cylindrical and frusta were performed by Nia et al. (Nia and Hamedani 2010). Ample of geometric modifications like- grooves (Hosseinipour and Daneshi 2003; Salehghaffari et al. 2010; Zhang and Huh 2009), tapering (Gan et al. 2016; Wierzbicki and Abramowicz 1983) and corrugations (Alkhatib et al. 2018; Mozafari, Eyvazian, et al. 2018; Mozafari, Lin, et al. 2018). They have revealed outcomes by retarding the initial peak force (IPF) and compressive force fluctuations.

Euler's buckling can be noticed in TW metal tubes very easily (Bammann et al. 2010; Reid 1993) and an increase in EA can be achieved by increasing the wall thickness (Ahmad and Thambiratnam 2009b; Niknejad and Rahmani 2014; Toksoy and G?den 2010; Wang et al. 2018). However, this will remarkably increase the weight. For increasing the energy-absorbing properties of TWS, foam elements can be used as fillers without increasing the volume and weight significantly (Seitzberger et al. 2000; Yang and Qi 2013). There are many varieties of foams that can be used to meet this requirements (Ahmad and Thambiratnam 2009a; Karagiozova, Alves, and Jones 2000). The effects of metallic and nonmetallic foams have been studied by researchers (Toksoy and G?den 2005; Zarei and Kr?ger 2008) with the conclusion that foam filling increased the number of folds with progressive buckling mechanism increasing the amount of energy absorbed when compared to empty tubes. For EA performance, foam-filled columns demonstrated smaller cross-sectional and lower weight than hollow (Hanssen, Langseth, and Hopperstad 2001). The increase in crushing force due to the use of foam was noticed (Costas et al. 2016; Palanivelu et al. 2010; Santosa et al. 2000; Yan, Chouw, and Jayaraman 2014) and prevention of the catastrophic failure of the empty metal tubes can achieved by using foam as fillers (Palanivelu et al. 2010). Among different foam types, polyurethane foam (PUF) is found to have better strength to weight ratio (Meguid, Attia, and Monfort 2004), which has been concentrically supported by a set experiments which revealed that the specific EA of PUF filled tubes exceeds that of Aluminum foam (AlF) filled tubes along with PUF being cheaper and easy processing (Gan et al. 2016). There has been an increasing demand of polymeric foams for enhancing EA performances of traditional light weight structures (Bin et al. 2015; Han et al. 2015; Yazici et al. 2015). EA capability of PUF is directionally proportional to the density (Niknejad, Elahi, and Liaghat 2012; Onsalung, Thinvongpituk, and Pianthong 2014; S Kanna, Subramaniyan Shahruddin et al. 2013), but probability of the foam fracture goes high with foam density (Niknejad, Elahi, and Liaghat 2012; Zhou et al. 2016) and can also lead to premature fracture (Zhou et al. 2016), which can base a conclusion that selecting proper density of PUF plays a very vital role (Ahmad and Thambiratnam 2009b).

One of the early studies of PUF filled tubes was commenced by Thornton (Thornton 1980) who conclude that filling foam can be weight effective for structures made up of mild steel; and is preferable to thicken the walls of the tube (Darvizeh et al. 2013; Lampinen and Jeryan 1982; Reid, Reddy, and Gray 1986). Niknejad et al. (Niknejad, Elahi, and Liaghat 2012) studied the effects on sidelong plastic deformation of cylindric tubes due to PUF under radial quasi-static loading and confirmed PUF accelerated the load-bearing capacity. The effectiveness of low density and low strength PUF on grooved TW circular tube was performed by Darvish et al. (Darvizeh et al. 2013). In their study, it was revealed that specific EA and structural effectiveness nearly doubled after filling the tubes with foam. It has been well established that benefit of PUF filling is inversely proportional to the tube wall thickness and is directly proportional to the diameter of the tube (Niknejad, Elahi, and Liaghat 2012; Reid, Reddy, and Gray 1986). PUF filling remarkably enhanced the EA characteristics of composite tubes (Othman et al. 2016; Rezaei et al. 2015). In the experiment In axial crushing of brass bi-tubular tubes, PUF filling decreased dynamic amplification factor with increasing EA capacity (Azarakhsh et al. 2015). Elahi et al. (Elahi et al. 2017) concluded that PUF filing played a story modifying role by changing the EA mechanism by hinge lines to absorption by PUF itself making hinge lines absorb the least energy.

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