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Citation
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Schenker A, Anteby I, Gal E, Kivity Y, Nizri E, Sadot O, Michaelis R, Levintant O, Ben-Dor G. Int. J. Impact Eng. 2008; 35(3): 184-198. |
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Abstract
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Since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC, the construction industry around the world has been challenged to design and build civil and military structures capable of withstanding explosion induced blast wave loads both from terrorist attacks and other acts of war. This challenge is very relevant to many countries around the world, in general, and Israel, where the threat of a mega-terror attack is part of the national consciousness, in particular.
With this in mind, a research team from the Protective Technologies Research & Development Center (PTR&DC) of the Faculty of Engineering Sciences has participated in a series of experimental explosions that were conducted by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in an explosive testing and evaluation range in the southern part of Israel.
This paper describes full-scale field explosion tests on protected and unprotected concrete slabs. The experiments were performed by the Protective Technologies Research & Development Center of the Faculty of Engineering Sciences of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU-PTR&DC) under a contract with the Israeli Ministry of Defense (MoD) and the supervision of the IDF Steering Committee for R&D of Protective Structures. The aims of the tests were to: (1) extract data on the dynamic response of an elementary concrete structure to blast loads in order to verify and validate (V&V) our corresponding computer codes; and (2) check the ability of aluminum foams to mitigate blast wave loads. Time-dependent measurements of the response of the concrete slabs to the blast wave loads were successfully recorded using a variety of measurement devices. The obtained data have been used to verify and validate our computer codes. |