Response characterization of highway bridge piers subjected to blast loading

Abstract

Recent attacks on a number of bridges demonstrate clear evidence of the vulnerability characterizing transportation systems to terrorist attacks. This vulnerability being further enhanced by the fact that the security measures implemented for the highway bridges are often not at par with those in place for the milestone bridges. This has necessitated studies to effectively characterize the response of highway bridge piers subjected to blast loads. The study, presented here, concentrates on investigating the effects of various parameters such as scaled distance, blast type, axial load ratio, and reinforcement detailing in assessing the response of reinforced concrete bridge piers that form the part of a two span highway bridge. The analysis of the bridge was carried out in accordance with IRC 6:2017. It was observed that at lower scaled distances, the burst type and the axial load ratio significantly affect the response of the pier. For a constant ALR value of 0.15, a 91.55% reduction in the peak displacement value was observed on increasing the scaled distance from 0.5 to 1 m/kg1/3. Furthermore, for the conventionally detailed piers, an increase in the ALR value at a scaled distance of 0.5 m/kg1/3 was observed to be characterized by catastrophic failure due to the buckling of the longitudinal rebar on account of crushing of the compression concrete. Seismic detailing was also found to significantly improve the response of the columns, scilicet the use of seismic detailing, was noted to significantly reduce the peak displacement (~ 40%).

Experimental study on protection of prestressed concrete box girder under vehicle explosion of bridge deck

“…Researchers such as Patel et al 2 and Yuan et al 3 have combined experimental and numerical analyses to study the impact of different structural parameters and axial loads on the antiexplosion performance of reinforced concrete bridge piers. Li et al 4 have investigated the dynamic response, damage mechanism, and residual bearing capacity of concrete‐filled steel tubular columns subjected to near and contact explosions and established a formula for calculating the residual bearing capacity of concrete‐filled steel tubular columns after explosions.…”

Blast resistance of single steel‐concrete composite slabs under contact explosion

“…Recently, terrorist attacks or gas explosions occurred frequently and caused damage or even a global collapse in civil engineering, which has attracted more concern to the anti‐blast of the infrastructure 1–4 . For instance, the recent Tianjin port explosion accident in China in 2015, and a huge Beirut downtown explosion accident in Lebanon in 2020, destroyed the construction severely and caused lives and heavy economic losses 5–9 …”

Study on steel fiber synergistically reinforced cellular concrete explosion‐proof effect in an underwater near‐field environment

“…Research on the explosion‐proof effectiveness of materials should be gradually extended from the material level to the structure level to fully reveal the dynamic response characteristics, failure modes, and other changes to the protected structure after setting a protective body under the explosion impact load and to evaluate the explosion‐proof effectiveness of protective materials. At present, many scholars have used numerical simulation to explore the impact of different types of explosion‐proof materials on the explosion‐proof performance of structures under explosive impact loads and have made some theoretical achievements that are helpful in the selection and design of explosion‐proof materials 18–20 . Liu et al 21 found that the damage degree of high‐performance geopolymer composite walls reinforced by steel wire mesh (SWM) under explosive impact loads was lower than that of conventional reinforced concrete walls and SWM‐ and aluminum foam‐reinforced high‐performance geopolymer composite walls, and the integrity of the wall structure was improved, with a superior explosion‐proof effect.…”

“…At present, many scholars have used numerical simulation to explore the impact of different types of explosion-proof materials on the explosion-proof performance of structures under explosive impact loads and have made some theoretical achievements that are helpful in the selection and design of explosion-proof materials. [18][19][20] Liu et al 21 found that the damage degree of high-performance geopolymer composite walls reinforced by steel wire mesh (SWM) under explosive impact loads was lower than that of conventional reinforced concrete walls and SWM-and aluminum foam-reinforced high-performance geopolymer composite walls, and the integrity of the wall structure was improved, with a superior explosion-proof effect. Matsagar 22 concluded that noncomposite panels composed of steel fiberreinforced concrete plates and cenospheric aluminum alloy syntactic foam composite sandwich plates offer good explosion-proof performance.…”