Foam-protected reinforced concrete structures under impact: Experimental and numerical studies

In light of recent terrorist attacks on facilities throughout the world, designers, planners, architects, and engineers are beginning to re-visit conventional approaches in the design of military and high-security facilities. Many existing buildings, structures and facilities should be better protected against man-made explosive hazards. For this reason the designs of public/private structures and facilities are getting much more attention in recent years. This paper presents the results of experimental and numerical investigations that were conducted in order to examine the capabilities of aluminum foams in mitigating the effect of blast waves acting on reinforced concrete (RC) beams and plates. Numerical simulations of the behavior of the investigated RC beams and plates under the dynamic loads support the experimental investigation results. The numerical simulations are based on finite element commercial and in-house codes. The experimental and numerical results for both the protected and unprotected RC beams and the conclusions obtained from these experiments and simulations are presented.