Blast-resistant performance of reinforced concrete petrochemical control room retrofitted with aluminum foam Sandwich panel
Zhijun Li, Yan Jiang, Dou Chen, Xuehua LiPurpose
The blast-resistant performance of a real reinforced concrete petrochemical control room retrofitted with an aluminum foam Sandwich panel is analyzed.
Design/methodology/approach
Considering different levels of blast loads and the thickness of the control room's shearing wall, the deformation and energy absorption of each member of the control room are taken as the performance indices to determine the optimal positioning and thickness of the foam aluminum Sandwich panel.
Findings
It is found that, without the aluminum foam Sandwich panel, the energy absorption of the shear wall facing the blast accounts for 45.1% and 76.4% of the total structural energy absorption for 1t and 2t Trinitrotoluene (TNT) respectively. The optimal thickness of aluminum foam is about 57.1% of the shearing wall thickness of the petrochemical control room which results in a reduction in the original shearing wall thickness by 29%.
Originality/value
Using only the reinforced concrete shearing wall is difficult to meet the blast-resistant performance requirement of the petrochemical control room. As the Aluminum foam material is an ideal lightweight material with excellent energy absorption ability, in this paper, the blast-resistant performance of a real reinforced concrete petrochemical control room retrofitted with an aluminum foam Sandwich panel is analyzed.