Explosioner i en förtätad stadsmiljö. fortsättning och slutfas - etapp 2

Research Project, 2024 – 2025

With the aim of making attractive land space available for further development, there is today a desire in many cities to implement a densification of the existing urban environment. However, such densification, e.g. over decking, leads to a reduced free distance between buildings and transport route, which results in increased demands for exceptional accidents such as explosions. To create an optimal overall solution for such an accidental scenario it is necessary that the three sub-areas of risk management, explosion load and structural response are properly coordinated. In today's handling of explosions, there are significant shortcomings among both risk analysts and structural engineers; this is often due to inadequate communication and lack of knowledge. Differences in response of structures subjected to static load or explosion load puts special demands on the design of explosion loaded structures, for which there today there are a lack in adequate instructions. For the Swedish Transport Administration this is of interest for e.g. explosion in tunnels/overdeckings or for buildings located nearby transport routes of the Swedish Transport Administration.

The proposed new project (Stage II) is a continuation of an ongoing doctoral project with two doctoral students (Stage I) financed by, among other things, the Swedish Transport Administration via BBT. The overall aim of both Stages I and II is to contribute to increased national competence development in the subject area of explosions, where one goal is to bridge the gap between risk analysts and structural engineers by clarifying the connection between an explosion and its consequences. Another goal is to develop simplified methods for determining the blast load and improve existing methods for determining the structure's resistance to such loads.

 
In Stage I, gas explosion in a traffic environment in the open and the structural response to impulse loading, especially with a focus on shear force response, have been mainly studied. In Stage II, this work will continue. For gas explosions, the acquired knowledge will be used to adapt the simplified calculation model (TNO Multienergy method), and be expanded to also treat internal gas explosions in tunnels. For the structural response, the focus will be on deformation capacity and shear force response, but will also be extended to deal with interaction between connected structural parts, emergence of normal force during explosion loading and studies of effective width for slab strips. Further, continued focus will be on developing simplified computational models for explosion loads and structural response, to approximately take into account various types of complex phenomena, and thereby make these available to a wider range of structural engineers.