October 9, 1997
BLAST
RESISTANT STRUCTURAL CONNECTIONS
by:
Dr. Ted
Krauthammer, Professor
Department of Civil &
Environmental Engineering
The Pennsylvania State
University
Structures cannot develop their full resistance if their details are inadequate. This is true also for structures designed to resist blast loads. Since many buildings could be subjected to blast loads, their behavior and its relationship with the detailing performance under blast loads is of great interest. Blast resistant structures must be robust (i.e. have a well-defined redundancy) to insure alternative load paths in case of localized failures. Insuring robustness may not be possible if the structural details cannot perform as expected. Recent earthquakes in the US and Japan have highlighted troublesome weaknesses in design and construction technologies of structural connections. Both steel and concrete connections exhibited surprisingly poor performance, underlined by brittle failures. It has been shown for facilities subjected to blast loads that structural details behavior roles. Therefore, a better understanding of structural details behavior under blast loads is very important, and a strong interest exists in developing better approaches to insure improved structural behavior. Although considerable information on this subject can be found in various references, current civilian design procedures usually do not explicitly address these issues. TM5-1300, a DOD design manual for structures to resist accidental explosions, contains guidelines for the safe design of blast resistant structural concrete and steel connections. However, the adequacy of these design procedures may not be well defined because of insufficient information about the behavior of structural connections under blast loads. The seminar presentation will address the behavior of structural connections, and will describe observations from numerical assessments of structural concrete and steel connections under blast effects.