Resilience of corrugated steel panel structures to blast loading: a combined experimental and numerical approach applied to the evaluation of the compound survival container

It is often said that steel structures and components provide ideal systems for blast resistance due to their ductile nature and their significant plastic deformation capacity. Yet, this potential has not yet been adequately exploited due to a lack of appropriate research and knowledge in the domain of civil and industrial engineering applications with respect to blast loading. This project aims to develop fundamental insight and design guidance for blast resistant steel structures, with the emphasis on corrugated panels and their typical applications in industrial and military facilities. As a practical application and a demonstrator case, the survival container – widely used in compounds during military operations abroad and mostly based on the commonly known standard ISO container – will be considered. The work will involve small-scale blast testing of a reduced model of the survival container in order to address the problem of blast wave evolution and pressure loading profiles in a complex configuration and the associated numerical model validation. Next, a blast test set-up for component testing will be developed to enable validation of the structural finite element modeling. Finally the survival container will be evaluated and optimized, based on the exploitation of the experimental tests and validated numerical models both for pressure and deformation prediction.