NUMERICAL ASSESSMENT OF DAMAGE PRODUCED BY BLAST LOADS ON MASONRY CONSTRUCTIONS

LUCCIONI, BIBIANA MARÍA; CODINA, RAMÓN; AMBROSINI, RICARDO DANIEL

Buenos Aires

Congreso; PANACM 2015; 2015

AMCA

When an explosion takes place outside a building, envelope masonry walls result seriously affectedby overpressures originated in the detonation. On the other hand, the masonry debris originated bythe collapse of structural and non structural elements may be lethal for people safety inside thebuilding. Iso-damage curves for the assessment of damage in structural and non structural elementscan be found in literature. These curves have been obtained from both experimental and actualexplosions and seem to be an attractive way to relate pressures and impulses to damage produced indifferent types of buildings and parts of them. Nevertheless, they are only indicative of damagelevels and they cannot be used to assess actual blast damage on a masonry constructions or to inferthe amount of explosive used in a blast attack from buildings damage. Numerical simulation of theproblem is nowadays a useful tool for these purposes. However, appropriate calibration andvalidation of the numerical tool and material models are needed in order to properly reproducemasonry behavior under blast loads.Numerical simulation of the effect of blast loads on masonry constructions performed with anhydrocode is presented in this paper. The effects of mesh size, different materials models used formasonry and erosion algorithm on damage results are discussed. Comparison of numerical resultswith available experimental results that corroborate the ability of the numerical model to reproduceactual masonry damage is also presented. Variable configurations, support conditions and openingsunder different blast loads at different locations are numerically simulated and the resulting damagepatterns are compared. Useful conclusions to improve first blast damage estimation based on isodamagecurves can be obtained from these comparisons.