Damage Assessment of Reinforced Concrete Structural Elements Subjected to Blast Load

An analytical approach of damage assessment for reinforced concrete structural elements subjected to blast loads is proposed. The nonlinear deformational behavior of the reinforced concrete structural element is considered and the pressure-impulse diagrams with respect to combined bending and shear failure are derived. The theoretical derivation is divided into elastic and post-elastic stages. A single degree of freedom system is adopted in the elastic stage to calculate the structural response due to shear and/or bending failure, respectively. The final displacement, velocity, and acceleration of the elastic stage are used as the initial conditions of the subsequent stages. In the post-elastic stages, the structural element is assumed to behave as a multi-linear model, and the softening property of the reinforced concrete is taken into account. The present method can be applied to various reinforced concrete structures with different elastic and post- elastic behaviors. The results are compared to show the effect of the different behavior of reinforced concrete.