BEHAVIOUR ASSESSMENT UNDER IMPULSIVE LOADING FOR STRUCTURES OF DIFFERENT HEIGHTS

Abstract

In recent years, there have been many terrorists‟ attacks in India as well as in other parts of the world. Such attacks are unpredictable and can cause very severe damages to buildings as well as to the citizens of the country. In such cases, the blast loading analysis on the structures comes into picture. Blast load is nothing but the sudden explosions that occur due to terrorists‟ attacks or due to some natural phenomena, which leads to damage and destruction of structures if at all the explosions are taking place near or in the premises of the structures. Such blasts cause catastrophic damages to structures which leads to dismantling of structures, shattering of windows or cladding etc. Due to the damages caused by such unpredictable situations, the structures should be designed to resist the blast loads. The design of structures to resist blast loads may be uneconomical but in the long run it proves to be a smart decision for the structures. The objective of this study on blast load analysis is to have knowledge of the effect of the blast loads on the structures of various heights and design the structures accordingly in the future. As the design philosophy for such structures may be costly compared to normal structures so, more care must be taken for the structures which are located in the vicinity of earthquake prone areas or the areas where bombarding, explosions etc. are more common. The codebook used for the design of structures for blast loads is “TM 5-1300- Structures to Resist the Effects of Accidental Explosions, (U.S. Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, 1990)”or UFC 3-340-02[1]. However, Indian Standard code IS: 4991 - 1968 “Criteria for Blast Resistant Design of Structures for Explosions above Ground” is also available. The software used for the analysis of the structures and modelling is SAP2000.