Structural robustness analysis of RC frames under seismic and blast chained loads scenarios

In this paper the structural robustness assessment of concrete frame buildings under blast and un-der earthquake blast hazard chain scenarios is investigated. A deterministic methodology for con-necting the robustness with the blast hazard intensity and for conducting the robustness analysis under earthquake-triggered blast is presented and applied to a 3D RC frame building by imple-menting nonlinear time history analyses considering both plastic behavior and large displace-ments. A preliminary sensitivity analysis on a 2D frame is conducted to identify the critical analy-sis parameters influencing the results. The robustness curves (residual structural capacity versus the level of damage occurring in the structure), evaluated both for the blast-only and for the earthquake-blast chained cases, are compared by considering different explosion locations inside the building (location of the blast-induced structural damage). Results show that neglecting the chained load scenarios would lead to the identification of an erroneous location as critical for the structural robustness performance.