• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.231-245
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• 2024

In recent decades, the protection and vulnerability of civil structures under explosion loads became a critical issue in terms of security, which may cause loss of lives and structural damage. Concrete retaining walls also restrict soils and slopes from displacements; meanwhile, intensive temporary loading may cause massive damage. In the current study, the modified Johnson-Holmquist (also known as J-H2) material model is implemented for concrete materials to model damages into the ABAQUS through user-subroutines to predict the blasting-induced concrete damages and volume strains. For this purpose, a 3D finite-element model of the concrete retaining wall was conducted in coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian simulation. Subsequently, a blast load equal to 500 kg of TNT was considered in three different positions due to UFC 3-340-02. Influences of the critical parameters in smooth blastings, such as distance from a free face, position, and effective blasting time, on concrete damage rate and destroy patterns, are explored. According to the simulation results, the concrete penetration pattern at the same distance is significantly influenced by the density of the progress environment. The result reveals that the progress of waves and the intensity of damages in free-air blasting is entirely different from those that progress in a dense surrounding atmosphere such as soil. Half-damaged elements in air blasts are more than those of embedded explosions, but dense environments such as soil impose much more pressure in a limited zone and cause more destruction in retaining walls.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.87-96
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• 2007

Risk assessment was carried out in order to improve the remediation and management strategy on a contaminated gunnery site, where a flood control reservoir is under construction nearby. Six chemicals, including explosive chemicals and heavy metals, which were suspected to possess risk to humans by leaching events from the site were the target pollutants for the assessment. A site-specific conceptual site model was constructed based on effective, reasonable exposure pathways to avoid any overestimation of the risk. Also, conservative default values were adapted to prevent underestimation of the risk when site-specific values were not available. The risks of the six contaminants were calculated by API's Decision Support System for Exposure and Risk Assessment with several assumptions. In the crater-formed-area(Ac), the non-carcinogenic risks(i.e., HI values) of TNT(Tri-Nitro-Toluene) and Cd were slightly larger than 1, and for RDX(Royal Demolition Explosives), over 50. The total non-carcinogenic risk of the whole gunnery range calculated to a significantly high value of 62.5. Carcinogenicity of Cd was estimated to be about $10^{-3}$, while that of Pb was about $5\;{\times}\;10^{-4}$, which greatly exceeded the generally acceptable carcinogenic risk level of $10^{-4}{\sim}10^{-6}$. The risk assessment results suggest that an immediate remediation practice for both carcinogens and non-carcinogens are required before the reservoir construction. However, for more accurate risk assessment, more specific estimations on condition shifts due to the construction of the reservoir are required, and more over, the effects of the pollutants to the ecosystem is also necessary to be evaluated.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.36 no.6
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• pp.355-364
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• 2023

The arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) method has been extensively researched owing to its capability to accurately predict the propagation of blast shock waves. Although the use of the ALE method for dynamic analysis can produce unreliable results depending on the mesh size of the finite element, few studies have explored the relationship between the mesh size for the air domain and the accuracy of numerical analysis. In this study, we propose a procedure to calculate the optimal mesh size based on the mean squared error between the maximum blast pressure values obtained from numerical simulations and experiments. Furthermore, we analyze the relationship between the weight of explosive material (TNT) and the optimal mesh size of the air domain. The findings from this study can contribute to estimating the optimal mesh size in blast simulations with various explosion weights and promote the development of advanced blast numerical analysis models.