Today, glass is a part of our everyday life and in the European countries there are produced about 10,000,000 tonnes of float glass every year of which approx. 80% is used for construction products. Normally, we have a positive view on glass used in our facades, as it allows daylight to come into the buildings while providing protection against wind and weather. In the event of an explosion, however, glass shatters and will be accelerated to velocities that causes serious injuries.
The industrial PhD project aims at developing a generic tool for assisting engineers in developing, designing, and securing facades against extreme dynamic loads, such as pressure waves from explosions and impact scenarios. It is the hypothesis, that such tool can be developed by examining small glass specimens subjected to high-speed loading and then analysing and applying these experimental data to develop a material model for describing the fracture mechanism that can be further implemented in full-scale simulations.
The project is divided into three phases. The first phase is focusing on the material characterisation of different types of glass (all made of the same raw material: soda-lime-silica) at varying loading rates primarily in a range equivalent to explosion and impact loads, as this is almost unreported in the literature. The experimental results are used in the second phase to develop a material model for describing and understanding the fracture mechanics of the different types of glass that will provide a basis for predicting the global structural response. The last and third phase will complete the project with validating a full-scale model for a realistic scenario so that the generic model can be applied to a given project covering design and risk analysis.
Over the last few decades, there has been reported an increase in the number of terror-related explosions, which even more emphasizes the importance of being able to predict the behaviour of facades at such events and thereby minimizing consequential damage. However, this requires efficient and precise tools/calculation models, which are sought in this project. In Norway, after the bombing in Oslo in 2011, demands have been made for buildings behaviour exposed to blast loads; something similar does not exist in Denmark…yet!
The developed model will not only benefit facade engineers and designers, but also decision makers (municipalities, builders, etc.) and insurance companies will potentially benefit from assessing how, e.g. high-risk buildings in urban areas affect the built environment in connection with explosions. In general, it is beneficial for everyone to secure buildings against extreme events. Unfortunately, this is quite costly and largely related to empirical data. Therefore, expensive tests are often carried out when for instance a new design is to be marketed. This means that the development in this field is slower and more expensive than necessary. A great improvement can be achieved by using computer simulations earlier in the design phase.
PROJECT POSTER
Acknowledgements
This work is partly funded by the Innovation Fund Denmark (IFD) under File No. 8053-00088B, Rambøll Fonden under File No. 2018-51 and Ramboll Denmark A/S, Private & Public Buildings East.
