Cladding Protection of Reinforced Concrete Structural Members against Blast Loading

Abstract

With the increasing threat of explosions on infrastructures across the world, the protective techniques against blast loading on existing structures have become more and more significant. As an energy absorptive material, aluminium foam has been introduced to be a sacrificial cladding on structures. This thesis aims to discover the protective effect of aluminium foam on reinforced concrete (RC) structural members which has been a common structural type for existing buildings. Homogeneous aluminium foam was firstly studied both numerically and theoretically. Based on the investigations of homogeneous foam, graded density aluminium foam was introduced to improve the protective effectiveness and efficiency. Blast experiment and analytical model were involved in the study of graded density aluminium foam on RC slabs.