Blasting Response of a Two-Storey RC Building Under Different Charge Weight of TNT Explosives

Abstract

The importance of blasting effects on the structures caused by explosions has become more and more apparent in recent years. The blasting effect shows itself with the explosion of a bomb, natural gas, boiler room, coal gas, etc. An explosion damages a structure badly and causes catastrophic effects on the members of the structures; moreover, causes economical problems and fatal events. So structural response of the structures has to be investigated against explosives inflicted by explosions. This study presents the blasting response of a two-storey reinforced concrete (RC) building under different charge weight of TNT explosives. In the first part of the study, a literature review related to blasting effect on the structures is included; theory of blast is defined with graphics and tables, explosion is explained with empirical formulas. Then, a two-storey RC building is numerically modelled in ANSYS Workbench software involving RC columns, beams, floors as structural elements, walls and windows as non-structural elements. After that, three explicit analyses are, respectively, performed considering 0.1 ton, 0.25 ton and 0.5 ton TNT explosives. The TNT explosives are placed on the RC building and they are exploded for 3 ms. The explicit analyses are performed using ANSYS AUTODYN software which is often used to simulate the response of materials to short duration severe loadings from impact, high pressure or explosions. The deformed shapes, pressure values, strain values and damage ratios are presented to compare three different explosions with contour diagrams, tables and graphics as a result of explicit analyses. The results showed that the different charge weight of TNT explosives considerably affected blasting response of the two-storey RC building.