Damage assessment of hollow core reinforced and prestressed concrete slabs subjected to blast loading

This paper presents an investigation of the deformations and damage modes, which occur in reinforced concrete (RC) or prestressed concrete (PC)hollow core slabs subjected to blast loads. This study focuses on four tests which have been performed on hollow core slabs with a compression layer, simply supported, subjected to explosions with different standoff distances for a constant charge weight. The paper discusses the numerical analysis carried out using the finite element software LS-DYNA. The results indicate that the appearance and growth of flexural cracks in concrete is delayed effectively by using prestressing. Moreover, prestressing decreases the deflection at mid-span of the tested hollow core slab and reduces the oscillation period due to the increase of the flexural stiffness and resistance of the hollow core slabs.