Ductile Thin Sheets for Blast Retrofit PREPRINT

Abstract : Blast resistant design has come to the forefront of engineering concerns in the wake of recent terrorist threats to the United States. Safety and security are of utmost concern when designing structures, and there has been a significant rise in the demand for researching new methods of reinforcing and retrofitting structures to provide better resistance to blast loadings. The focus of this paper is on the use of thin sheets as a method of such retrofits. Research is done to ascertain the sheets strength, analyze the response of the sheets to the application of static pressure, explore strength and ductility limits, investigate connection details, and develop an analytical model for defining the materials static resistance function, which will be verified by experimental data. The analytical model for the resistance function will be used in a single-degree of freedom (SDOF) dynamic model to predict the response of the sheathings in a blast-retrofitted wall system.