MEMBRANE ACTION ON REINFORCED CONCRETE BEAM-SLAB STRUCTURES SUBJECTED TO BLAST LOADS

To investigate the compressive membrane action of the reinforced concrete structures subjected to blast loads, a new analytical method was proposed, which can predict the dynamic responses of concrete beams with the action of membrane force under blast loads. The method was based on a single degree of freedom system, which combines an elasto-viscoplastic rate-sensitive material model with the Modified Membrane Design Force Method developed before. A good agreement was observed between the experimental data and the analytical results. The effects of the main parameters such as loading rates, restraint stiffness and reinforcement ratio on the structure subjected to the typical nuclear and chemical explosion loads were analyzed by the proposed analytical method. It was demonstrated that the dynamic resistance capacity increases with the increasing of loading rate as well as longitudinal restraint stiffness and decreasing of the tensile reinforcement ratio, but the more increasing of the dynamic resistance the larger plastic deformation.