Blast load effects on building structures

Abstract

In recent years, terrorist attacks by bombs have caused large economical loses and many casualties around the world. Given this, the protection of buildings from bomb blasts became an important issue. This requires understanding the behaviour of buildings when subjected to loads due to bomb explosions. The objective of this paper is to investigate the performance of reinforced concrete frame buildings subjected to blast loads. A typical 10-storey office building designed for Ottawa was used in this investigation. Nonlinear time history analyses were conducted to the building for a number of bomb blast scenarios (i.e., different weights of explosive and distances from the building). The performance of the building was assessed by considering the interstorey drifts and displacement ductilities obtained from the analysis. The results showed that providing a standoff distance of about 15 m would protect the building from significant damage and collapse due to blast loads from detonations of up to 500 kg explosive.