“…The events in Beirut are not unprecedented; there have been many recent large scale industrial explosions ( 10 tonnes TNT equivalent) in built-up areas [56], including Tianjin, China (2015; 173 deaths), and Buncefield, UK (2005; 43 injuries). Accordingly, the structural response to long-duration blast loading is an ongoing topic of interest, particularly for structures sensitive to such loads, e.g., bare steel sections [72,73], partially-clad steel frames [74], cylindrical shell structures [75,76], ISO containers [77], and bridges [78]. Accurately simulating long-duration blasts and their interaction with structural components several times smaller than the blast wavelength is highly challenging and requires considerable computational expense [79,80].…”