Blast loading on a boundary wall 2

[ranawaseem]

I need to design a boundary wall 4m high for a blast loading which is 2m away from the wall. Please mention some reference to calculate the load and in your opinion how much will be the pressure on the boundary wall in this situation?

 

[bridgebuster]

The pressure on the wall is a function of the type of explosive, the stand-off distance, and the amount of the charge. You may want to purchase AISC Design Guide 26, Design of Blast Resistant Structures. The Department of Defense and other Federal agencies used to post design manuals on line. I don't know if they're still available online.

There are two design approaches: dynamic or pseudo-static. Why doesn't your client provide you with the pressure? In my experience that's how it's been done.

 

[ranawaseem]

thank you bridgebuster for your quick reply!
I want to add that this wall will act as a SHIELD for the housing located inside surrounded by this perimeter/boundary wall. I will try to search for these documents. Looking forward for more comments from other engineers too!

 

[bridgebuster]

You're welcome and good luck. A wall shouldn't be too difficult. I managed a tunnel project a few years ago which required a few PhD's and a lot of computational fluid dynamics.

 

[Archie264]

I may be speaking out of turn here but with only a 2 meter standoff distance I'm afraid you might find that the theoretical pressures you'll have to deal with might be ridiculously high. Having said that, we can't write ideal conditions into the specifications for existing buildings so we have to deal with the situation at hand. I think I'd follow bridgebuster's advice and ask the client for design parameters.

This type of scenario happens often with existing buildings in congested areas. There's an old saying not to let "perfect" be the enemy of the "good", so in those cases one simply does the best one can.

 

[EngineeringEric]

The stating of the explosion at 2m is not too uncommon, i have seen this on multiple federal jobs on various military bases. The analysis that we had to do were not something that could be done by hand, we used a few programs which were developed by the corps, Protective Design Center, and requires the designer to go through some training and software verification.

 

[Jerehmy]

https://pdc.usace.army.mil/software/sbeds/

military software we used for my blast design class in school. send a request in. very useful if you're able to get it.

 

[ThomasH]

You mention that you want the wall to act as a shield. If the wall is properly designed it can probably reduce (eliminate) the reflected pressure but the side-on pressure will still be there. So the "shield" may or may not be what you expect in terms of load reduction.

Thomas

 

[gyung]

Here is a blast design reference which related to steel structure (Link). It gives a good basic background about blast design with some good references. Hope it helps.