Simplification of fully vented blasts in an urban canyon environment and its effects on RC structures

With the increasing threat of terrorist bombing attacks in city streets, the confining of surrounding buildings in these urban environments magnifies the effects of explosions due to blast wave reflections, and therefore it is important to quantify the effect of these blasts on structures and structural elements. In this paper a validated finite difference model was used to characterize fully vented blasts as a bilinear pressure time history. The simplified bilinear pressure time history together with an advanced moment-rotation analysis model for calculation of the moment rotation relationship of RC members are incorporated into the finite difference procedure for the dynamic response analysis of reinforced RC slabs. With the finite difference model, parametric studies were conducted to investigate how the simplified bilinear pressure time history affects the dynamic response of RC slabs. Pressure impulse diagrams of structural members from the simplified bilinear pressure time history were also generated numerically by using the aforementioned finite difference model.