Advancements in Design, Analysis, and Retrofitting of Structures Exposed to Blast

摘要

The objective of this special issue is to provide an overview on the current trends and recent advancements in terms of design, analysis, experimental testing, and retrofitting of structural systems and assemblies exposed to exceptional loads such as explosions. Protection of constructed facilities from damaging natural hazards and exceptional loads, as known, has recently become an important issue in common practice. Besides the generalized goal of protective constructions to minimize injuries and improve the probability of survival of people, after the bombing of the Oklahoma Federal Building (1995), the blast design of structures has become a fundamental requirement, so that most of the actual strategic buildings and infrastructures must guarantee appropriate levels of blast resistance. Compared to quasistatic ordinary loads or conventional hazards such as wind gusts, earthquakes, floods, or moderate impacts, blast events are typically characterized by a large-scale, extremely rapid, and sudden release of energy, generally in the order of thousandths of seconds or milliseconds. As a result, specific design methods and advanced computational models able to properly include the effects of several aspects, like high strain rates, nonlinear inelastic material behaviors, and time-dependent deformations, are strictly required. The vulnerability assessment of a given structure exposed to explosive events, moreover, should properly take into account the interaction of the assigned blast wave and the targeted system, as well as the uncertainties implicitly related to the blast pressure description.