Designing Blast Hardened Structures - Free PDF eBook

How Department Of Defense Research Protects People And Buildings . . . Special Issue Link

Designing Blast Hardened Structures For Military & Civilian Use - Free PDF Download Link
Page 53 ( scroll down the eBook for this article )

Centuries ago castles and moats addressed the need to keep a facility safe from an attacker. From those massive stone and wood structures, to the hardened reinforced concrete and sophisticated intrusion detection systems of the present, the principles of  hardened structures have fundamentally remained the same: Identify the baseline threat and keep it at a safe distance, or create a structure as impervious as possible to that threat. Bruce Walton provides a broad, overall perspective on the problem of designing a hardened structure, and describes some of the techniques, fundamentals, and resources available.


Bruce A. Walton is a registered structural engineer with the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Protective Design
Center in Omaha, Nebraska. He is a member of the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Urban Search and Rescue
Team as a structural specialist. Mr. Walton is a retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, who has worked for the
Protective Design Center since 1989. He has many years of experience in research and design with both the
Air Force and Army. His background consists mainly of research in the areas of weapon effects, rapid repair of
wartime facility damage, and the design of facilities to resist the effects of nuclear weapons, conventional
weapons, and accidental explosions. He has developed computer programs in the areas of weapon effects
prediction and computational dynamics. He was also a major author of UFC 3-340-01, Design & Analysis
of Hardened Structures to Conventional Weapons Effects. Mr. Walton was also the primary DOD structural
investigator for the World Trade Center, Oklahoma Federal Building, and Khobar Towers – Saudi Arabia
bombings.


Blast Retrofit Research and Development: Protection for Walls and Windows - Page 31

Blast Retrofit Research and Development:

David Coltharp and Dr. Robert L. Hall, Geotechnical and Structures Laboratory, US Army Corps of Engineers, Engineer Research and Development Center, Vicksburg, MS

Conventional building components are highly vulnerable to terrorist vehicle bomb attack. Common annealed glass windows break at very low blast pressures and the resulting flying glass fragments are a major cause of injuries in many bombing incidents. Masonry in-fill walls are also weak elements and another source of hazardous debris. Through the combined research and development efforts
of multiple DOD agencies and the State Department, significant advances have been made since 1996 in improving methods  for protection of conventional military and government facilities. David Coltharp presents some of the unique and innovative methods that have been developed for retrofitting windows and walls, and describes how they increase the blast capacity of these vulnerable components, decrease standoff requirements, and improve protection for personnel.


http://hardenedstructures.blogspot.com

AMPTIAC

Advanced Materials and Processes Technology Information Analysis Center (US DoD)