In recent years, there have been numerous explosion-related accidents due to military and terror- ist activities. Such incidents caused not only damages to structures but also human casualties, especially in ur- ban areas. To protect structures and save human lives…
In recent years, there have been numerous explosion-related accidents due to military and terror- ist activities. Such incidents caused not only damages to structures but also human casualties, especially in ur- ban areas. To protect structures and save human lives against explosion accidents, better understanding of the explosion effect on structures is needed. In an explosion, the blast load is applied to concrete structures as an impulsive load of extremely short duration with very high pressure and heat. Generally, concrete is known to have a relatively high blast resistance compared to other construction materials. However, normal strength concrete structures require higher strength to improve their resistance against impact and blast loads. There- fore, a new material with high-energy absorption capacity and high resistance to damage is a better material for blast resistance design. Recently, Ultra High Strength Concrete (UHSC) and Reactive Powder Concrete (RPC) have been actively developed to significantly improve concrete strength. UHSC and RPC can improve concrete strength, member size and weight reductions and workability improvement. High strength concrete usages in better earthquake resistance and increase a building height and bridge span. Also, UHSC and RPC can be im- plemented for blast resistance design of infrastructure due to terror or impact such as 9.11 terror attack. There- fore, in this study, the blast tests are performed to investigate the behavior of UHSC and RPC slab subjected to blast load. Blast wave characteristics, including incident and reflected pressures as well as maximum and resid- ual displacements and strains in steel and concrete surface are measured. Also, blast damages and failure modes were recorded for each specimen. From these tests, UHSC and RPC are shown to effectively resist blast explo- sions compare to normal strength concrete.