Protection performance of sacrificial cladding with foam concrete filled aluminum tubes under blast loading

In the present study, a new sacrificial cladding with the core of foam concrete filled aluminum tube is proposed for structural protection to resist the blast load. First of all, the energy absorption capacity of a single aluminum tube filled with different densities of foam concrete and the cladding with the core of different densities of foam concrete filled aluminum tubes is experimentally investigated by the quasi-static compressive test. Then the blast test was conducted on the proposed cladding to experimentally examine its protective performance. In addition, with the validated numerical model by the blast test data, the effect of the density of foam concrete filler, the thickness of the aluminum tube, and the tube spacing on the protective performance of the cladding is numerically investigated. The quasi-static compressive test results show that the density of the foam concrete filler and the mutual squeezing between the tubes have a significant influence on the energy absorption capacity of the proposed cladding. The observed residual deflection of the rear panel in the blast test demonstrates that the protective performance of the proposed cladding could be significantly improved with increasing density of foam concrete filler. The numerical results show that increasing the density of foam concrete filler and the thickness of aluminum tube, reducing the tube spacing are beneficial to reduce the energy input to the system. Meanwhile, the simultaneously increased stiffness of the cladding would lead to a significant increase in the peak load transferred to the protected structure.