Study of blast wave impact on concrete

The past decade has brought an upsurge of terrorist attacks throughout the world. A common form of attack is bombings employed against a civilian structure. These bombs lead to blast waves resulting from high explosive bursts in air, causing severe structural damage to buildings that often collapse before evacuation is possible. These blast waves subject the buildings to repeated dynamic loading in the form of reflecting shock waves which then finally lead to their destruction. Many studies have been carried out to understand the static loading of these structures. The current study is to protect existing buildings from an explosion. The proposal is to use a weak sand-cement mixture to form an outer boundary wall to absorb the impact of an explosion outside its boundary and protect the civilian structure.; A blast wave front possesses characteristics similar to a shock wave created in a shock tube and a reasonably realistic simulation of blast loading on structures can be made using an equivalent shock simulator. Such a shock simulator is safe, has high productivity and provides reproducible results. The set up is discussed in detail in this thesis.; While shock waves are different from blast waves in possessing a different profile, shock wave impacts still provide a reasonable simulation of the blast wave during an explosion. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...