Verulam

Chief Executive’s report on the Institution 2011

A President’s year – 2011

Explosive testing of full-size ultra-high performance fibre-reinforced concrete panels was conducted in 2008. These tests and a simplified single-degree-of-freedom analysis of the response of the panels are reported. Each panel measured 3.5m by 1.3m by 100mm thick. The panels were contained within a large concrete enclosure to minimise clearing around the sides from the blast wave and placed between 7m and 12m from a 100kg TNT equivalent explosive charge. Two of the panels were fabricated with different levels of steel fibre dosage. The remaining two panels were fabricated with steel fibres together with supplementary steel bar reinforcement. Numerical computer modelling was carried out using the ANSYS Autodyn package to predict the behaviour of the four panels before testing. Based on the predictive modelling, each panel was placed a suitable distance from the explosive charge so as to cause permanent damage but not total structural collapse.