• Journal of the Korean Society for Advanced Composite Structures
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.38-44
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• 2015

In this paper, a finite element dynamic simulation study was performed to gain an insight about the blast wall test details for the offshore structures. The simulation was verified using qualitative and quantitative comparisons for different materials. Based on in-depth examination of blast simulation recordings, dynamic behaviors occurred in the blast wall against the explosion are determined. Subsequent simulation results present that the blast wall made of high energy absorbing high manganese steel performs much better in the shock absorption. In this paper, the existing finite element shock analysis using the LS-DYNA program is further extended to study the blast wave response of the corrugated blast wall made of the high manganese steel considering strain rate effects. The numerical results for various parameters are verified by comparing different material models with dynamic effects occurred in the blast wall from the explosive simulation.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.135-148
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• 2017

Topside areas on an offshore oil and gas platform are highly susceptible to explosion. A blast wall on these areas plays an important role in preventing explosion damage and must withstand the expected explosion loads. The uniformly distributed loading condition, predicted by Explosion Risk Analyses (ERAs), has been applied in most of the previous analysis methods. However, analysis methods related to load conditions are inaccurate because the blast overpressure around the wall tends to be of low-level in the open area and high-level in the enclosed area. The main objectives of this paper are to study the effects of applying different load applications and compare the dynamic responses of the blast wall. To do so, various kinds of blast pressures were measured by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations on the target area. Nonlinear finite element analyses of the blast wall under two types of identified dynamic loadings were also conducted.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.65-74
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• 2016

A finite element dynamic simulation is performed to gain an insight about the stiffened blast wall structures subjected to blast loading. The simulation was verified using qualitative and quantitative comparisons for different materials. Based on in-depth examination of blast simulation recordings, dynamic behaviors occurred in the blast wall against the explosion are determined. Subsequent simulation results present that the blast wall made of the high performance steel performs much better in the shock absorption. In this paper, the existing finite element shock analysis using the LS-DYNA program is further extended to study the dynamic response of the stiffened blast wall made of the high-performance steel considering high strain-rate effects. The numerical results for various parameters were verified by comparing different material models with dynamic effects occurred in the stiffened blast wall from the explosive simulation.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.130-137
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• 2012

Blast walls are integral structures at the typical offshore topside module to provide safety barriers for personnel and critical equipment against any blast loading and hydrocarbon explosions. The blast wall structures are usually configured with stainless steel. It can be referred as the good mechanical properties of the stainless steel against blast load, which features the characteristics of significant energy absorption and ductility. In this study, the proposed designs of corrugated panel are examined in order to determine the best design which satisfies the design criteria. The criteria on maximum deflection and stress are used to decide the best design. The effect of inclined angle of profile on deformation characteristics of blast wall is also performed. The numerical study was performed by using NX Nastran 7.5.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.68 no.2
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• pp.237-245
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• 2018

This study proposes an empirical formulation to predict the maximum deformation of offshore blast wall structure that is subjected to impact loading caused by hydrocarbon explosion. The blast wall model is assumed to be supported by a simply-supported boundary condition and corrugated panel is modelled. In total, 1,620 cases of LS-DYNA simulations were conducted to predict the maximum deformation of blast wall, and they were then used as input data for the development of the empirical formulation by regression analysis. Stainless steel was employed as materials and the strain rate effect was also taken into account. For the development of empirical formulation, a wide range of parametric studies were conducted by considering the main design parameters for corrugated panel, such as geometric properties (corrugation angle, breadth, height and thickness) and load profiles (peak pressure and time). In the case of the blast profile, idealised triangular shape is assumed. It is expected that the obtained empirical formulation will be useful for structural designers to predict maximum deformation of blast wall installed in offshore topside structures in the early design stage.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.66 no.6
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• pp.713-727
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• 2018

Thin-walled mental tubes under lateral crushing are desirable and reliable energy absorbers against impact or blast loads. However, the early formations of plastic hinges in the thin cylindrical wall limit the energy absorption performance. This study investigates the energy absorption performance of a simple, light and efficient energy absorber called the ring stiffened tube. Due to the increase of section modulus of tube wall and the restraining effect of the T-stiffener flange, key energy absorption parameters (peak crushing force, energy absorption and specific energy absorption) have been significantly improved against the empty tube. Its potential application in the offshore blast wall design has also been investigated. It is proposed to replace the blast wall endplates at the supports with the energy absorption devices that are made up of the ring stiffened tubes and springs. An analytical model based on beam vibration theory and virtual work theory, in which the boundary conditions at each support are simplified as a translational spring and a rotational spring, has been developed to evaluate the blast mitigation effect of the proposed design scheme. Finite element method has been applied to validate the analytical model. Comparisons of key design criterions such as panel deflection and energy absorption against the traditional design demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed design in blast alleviation.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.93-101
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• 2024

Code-compliant seismic design should be essentially applied to realize the so-called emulative performance of precast concrete (PC) lateral force-resisting systems, and this study developed simple procedures to design precast industrial buildings with intermediate precast bearing wall systems considering both the effect of seismic and blast loads. Seismic design provisions specified in ACI 318 and ASCE 7 can be directly adopted, for which the so-called 1.5S_y condition is addressed in PC wall-to-wall and wall-to-base connections. Various coupling options were considered and addressed in the seismic design of wall-to-wall connections for the longitudinal and transverse design directions to secure optimized performance and better economic feasibility. On the other hand, two possible methods were adopted in blast analysis: 1) Equivalent static analysis (ESA) based on the simplified graphic method and 2) Incremental dynamic time-history analysis (IDTHA). The ESA is physically austere to use in practice for a typical industrial PC-bearing wall system. Still, it showed an overestimating trend in terms of the lateral deformation. The coupling action between precast wall segments appears to be inevitably required due to substantially large blast loads compared to seismic loads with increasing blast risk levels. Even with the coupled-precast shear walls, the design outcome obtained from the ESA method might not be entirely satisfactory to the drift criteria presented by the ASCE Blast Design Manual. This drawback can be overcome by addressing the IDTHA method, where all the design criteria were fully satisfied with precast shear walls' non-coupling and group-coupling strength, where each individual or grouped shear fence was designed to possess 1.5S_y for the seismic design.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Advanced Composite Structures
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.6-12
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• 2010

This study investigates how to apply composite material to the blast loading protection devices, mainly used for military purpose. Traditionally, earth-filled blast walls have been used for protecting important parts of military facilities and personnels. However these types of blast walls show difficulty in fabrication and portability because of their nature of heavy weight. Composite materials are known to have relatively higher specific stiffness and strength than any other metallic and earth-filled materials such as sand and gravels. Totally 4 times of TNT blast experiments were performed on the carbon/epoxy blast walls. After the end of each test, the improvement of blast wall was implemented to the structure. The test results show that the use of composite material in the blast protecting area is the one of very effective and reliable alternatives.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.49 no.1
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• pp.65-79
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• 2023

This paper presents a development of empirical evaluations, which can be used to evaluate the damage of fiber-reinforced concrete composites (FRC) wall subjected to close-in blast loads. For this development, a combined application of numerical simulation and machine learning approaches are employed. First, finite element modeling of FRC wall under blast loading is developed and verified using experimental data. Numerical analyses are then carried out to investigate the dynamic behavior of the FRC wall under blast loading. In addition, a data set of 384 samples on the damage of FRC wall due to blast loads is then produced in order to develop machine learning models. Second, three robust machine learning models of Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) are employed to propose empirical evaluations for predicting the damage of FRC wall. The proposed empirical evaluations are very useful for practical evaluation and design of FRC wall subjected to blast loads.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.46-54
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• 2012

More than 70% of the accidents that occur on offshore installations stem from hydrocarbon explosions and fires, which, because they involve blast effects and heat, are extremely hazardous and have serious consequences in terms of human health, structural safety, and the surrounding environment. Blast barriers are integral structures in a typical offshore topside module to protect personnel and safety critical equipment by preventing the escalation of events caused by hydrocarbon explosions. Many researchers have shown the adequacy of the simple design tool commonly used by the offshore industry for the analysis and design of blast walls. However, limited information is available for corrugated blast wall design with explosion impact response characteristics. Therefore, this paper presents a parametric study on the explosion impact response characteristics of an offshore installation's stainless steel corrugated blast wall. This paperalso investigates and recommends design parameters for the structural design of a corrugated blast wall based on a nonlinear structural analysis of experiential results.