UCSD to construct world’s first bomb blast simulator

Structural engineers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Jacobs School of Engineering will test the effects of bomb blasts in a new blast simulator laboratory under construction at UCSD. It will be the world's first facility designed to study structural damage caused by bomb blasts without creating actual explosions. The researchers will also test new technologies to harden buildings against bomb blasts, including a UCSD composite overlay technique (originally designed to protect structures from earthquakes) which has proven effective in full-scale explosive blast tests and has been deployed abroad in several US buildings.

The Explosive Loading Laboratory Testing Program is supported through a $4.2 million contract from the Technical Support Working Group (TSWG), the federal interagency organisation for combating terrorism. TSWG has named UCSD as one of its primary contractors in the focus area of blast mitigation, and a key deliverable in the programme will be a design manual describing proven methods for hardening high-risk buildings against terrorist bomb blasts.

“Today, designing buildings that are blast resistant is more of an art than a science,” said Frieder Seible, Dean of the Jacobs School and principal investigator on the project. “The controlled and repeatable tests we will do with the blast simulator will allow us to create and validate computer tools that can then be used to tailor the design and assessment of important facilities.”

Bomb blasts damage buildings by creating shock waves – moving air with such force and velocity that the pulses literally push and pull structural walls and columns. When key load-bearing components begin to fail, it can lead to the progressive collapse of the entire building. The UCSD blast simulator will recreate the speed and force of explosive shock waves through servo-controlled hydraulic actuators. Researchers will perform blast simulations on critical load-bearing elements (eg columns, beams and girders, walls and floors), and on non-structural elements such as curtain walls and windows. The machine is being designed by Jacobs School structural engineers and MTS Systems Corporation, a company that has created other velocity-generating test laboratories for automotive crash tests and military weapons tests.
It is expected that the blast simulator will be up and running by early 2005.

www.ucsd.edu

•Date: 17th December 2003 •Region: N.America •Type: Article •Topic: Terrorism
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