ALE Modeling of Explosive Detonation on or near Reinforced-Concrete Columns

The detonation of explosive threats in contact with or near reinforced concrete columns was modeled using the Arbitrary Langrangian-Eulerian (ALE) capability of LS-DYNA, in support of the development of a software tool for assessing the vulnerability of structures subjected to terrorist attack. The explosive, air, and concrete were modeled as fluids, and the reinforcement was modeled using beam elements. *MAT_72R3 was used for the concrete, and column damage was characterized using the scaled damage measure, an output from the constitutive model that quantifies damage to the material. The model was initially validated against a large database relating spall and breach thresholds of reinforced concrete slabs to charge weight and standoff. It was further validated against a small database for explosive loading against reinforced concrete columns. A parameter study was then performed to populate a results space comprising four column shapes over a representative ra nge of dimensions. This results space was used to develop a fast-running algorithm that will be implemented in the structural vulnerability assessment software.