Performance-based design of stainless steel profiled barrier blast walls

Abstract

Structural collapse and failures in recent events have uncovered the problem of current design procedures and confirmed the need for new methods and approaches for performance evaluation and design. The main issue is the appropriate consideration and treatment of the various uncertainties in the explosion loadings and the complex blast wall behaviour, considering dynamic and nonlinearity effects in the evaluation and assessment process. To capture these uncertainties or associated effects in the design of profiled barrier blast walls, a new methodology needs to be introduced and developed to perform probabilistic reliability assessment. However, to consider the reliability approach in the design of blast walls appropriately, a performance-based assessment method is required. Therefore, this study presents a framework for performance-based assessment of stainless steel profiled barrier blast walls. Initially, by using the enhanced APDL finite element modelling programming package, a blast wall with consideration of upper and lower connections is developed.Various uncertainties in explosion loadings, material and section properties are considered in the probabilistic assessments. For the performance-based design, performance levels of the blast wall structures are studied at serviceability, damage control and collapse prevention levels. The design criteria and the maximum allowable response values are initially specified to be investigated and discussed and in later stages optimal response target values are proposed for performance-based assessment under various probabilistic explosion loadings (i.e. hazards).