Experimental and numerical studies of novel protective panels against blast and impact loadings

[Truncated abstract] Protective panels are traditionally designed and fabricated with solid materials of huge weight to resist blast and impact loadings. This not only increases the material and construction costs, but also undermines the operational performance of the protective panels. To overcome these problems, many researchers have tried to use high-strength materials and different structural forms in structural design to resist high-intensity blast and impact loadings. In this thesis, a new configuration of a double-layered panel with a structural form of multi-arch-surface is introduced first. Its blast loading resistance capacity and energy absorption capacity are numerically investigated by using finite element code LS-DYNA. To calibrate the numerical model, some existing panels with test and numerical simulation data reported by other researchers are modeled. The results obtained from the current numerical model are compared with existing numerical and testing data. A good agreement between them is observed. The calibrated numerical model is used to simulate the dynamic responses of the proposed panels with different configurations subjected to blast loadings. The peak and permanent displacements of center point of inner layer, internal energy absorptions and boundary reaction forces of different panels are calculated and compared. It is found that the proposed new multi-arch panel outperforms other forms of panels in resisting blast loadings. In order to maximize the structural performance of the multi-arch panels, parametric studies are also carried out to investigate the effects of panel configurations on the blast resistance capacity of multi-arch panels with the same strucutral weight.