Experimental and numerical investigations of laminated glass subjected to blast loading

Abstract Laminated glass is widely used on the outside surface of modern buildings and it can protect the interior of a structure from the effects of an air blast. In this study several numerical models are reviewed and used to simulate the failure of the glass as well as of the interlayer. Layered shell elements with special failure criteria are efficiently employed in the simulations. For the PVB an elastic–plastic material law is used. For the glass, after the numerical failure at an integration point, stresses are set to zero under tension, while the material can still react to compression. If the interlayer reaches the failure criterion of PVB, the concerned element is eroded. Older and new experiments with laminated glass are used to validate the numerical results. The experiments include both the failure of the glass sheets and of the PVB interlayer. It is shown that the layered model can adequately reproduce the experimental results, also in cases where the interlayer fails. Results of a full 3D solid model are also presented and discussed.