Recent events including deliberate terrorist attacks and accidental explosions have highlighted the need for comprehensive research in the area of structural response to blast loading. Research in this area has recently received significant attention by the civil engineering community. Reinforced Concrete (RC) water reservoir tanks are an integral part of the critical infrastructure network of urban centers and are vulnerable to blast loading. However, there is a lack of research and knowledge on the performance of RC reservoir walls under blast loading. The objective of this research study is to experimentally investigate the performance of reinforced concrete reservoir walls subjected to blast loading and to analyze the structural response. This study provides experimental test data on the performance of reinforced concrete reservoir walls under blast loading and complementary analytical predictions using the Singe-Degree-Of-Freedom (SDOF) analysis method.
The reservoir walls in this study were designed according to the water volume capacity using the Portland Cement Association (PCA 1993) methodology. The design was validated using software SAP 2000. The experimental program involved the construction and simulated blast testing of two RC reservoir wall specimens with different support conditions: (1) two opposite lateral edges fixed, bottom edge pinned and top edge free; and (2) two opposite lateral edges fixed, and bottom and top edges free. The first boundary condition was intended to promote two-way bending action, while the second was dominated by one-way bending. The two specimens were each subjected to a total of six consecutive incrementally increasing blast tests. The experimental program was conducted in the shock tube testing facility that is housed in the University of Ottawa. Wall displacements, reinforcement strains, and reflected pressures and impulses were measured during testing.
Analytical calculations were conducted using the equivalent SDOF method to simulate the dynamic response of the RC reservoir wall specimens under different blast loadings. Published tables, charts and coefficients contained in Biggs (1964) and UFC 3-340-02 (2008) were adopted in the equivalent SDOF calculations. The analytical results were compared against the
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experimental data. The SDOF method predicted smaller displacements than those recorded during testing. The approximate nature of the parameters and tables used in the equivalent SDOF calculations contributed to the discrepancy between the analytical and experimental results. Furthermore, assumptions regarding the support conditions and neglecting residual damage from previous blast tests contributed to the underestimation of the displacements.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/31441 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Fan, Jin |
| Contributors | Palermo, Dan, Nistor, Ioan |
| Publisher | Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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