Dynamic analysis of shell structures with application to blast resistant doors

This paper concerns the dynamic analysis of shell structures, with emphasis on application to steel and steel-concrete composite blast resistant doors. In view of the short duration and impulsive nature of the blast loading, an explicit integration method is adopted. This approach avoids time-consuming computations of structural stiffness matrix and solving of simultaneous nonlinear equations. Single-point quadrature shell elements are used, with numerical control to suppress spurious hourglass modes. Composite shells are handled by an appropriate integration rule across the thickness. Both material and geometric nonlinearities are accounted for in the formulation. Contact and gap problems are considered using bilinear spring elements in the finite element analysis. Numerical examples are presented for some benchmark problems and application study to blast resistant doors. Good correlation is generally obtained between the numerical results based on the software developed and the results obtained by other means including field blast tests.