Reduction of Explosion Effects by Use of a Sandwich Wall

Sammanfattning: It was recently decided that a new hospital is to be built in Växjö. It is important that hospitals can be utilised no matter the circumstances, even in situations of threat. New reports have been published concerning how hospitals are to be designed. In this, it is mentioned that explosions are a threat that should be considered. Due to this, it was investigated however concrete sandwich walls could lead to less damage to the load carrying part of the wall, when air blasts from an explosion is the considered load. Two different designs of the concrete part were tried, one plate wall element, and one column wall element. Different core materials were also tried; air and phenolic foam of three different stiffnesses. The problem was numerically simulated by use of the commercial finite element software Abaqus. To compare the different designs, several parameters were analysed. These are: the energy, displacements, tensile damage, reaction force and stress–strain relationship of the reinforcement. From this, it was found out that the most favourable concrete design is when the wall is stiffened by columns. It was also found out that the core that leads to the least damage to the inner wall is air. However, phenolic foam of a low stiffness leads to almost equal results as for air.