In light of recent terrorist attacks on facilities throughout the world, designers, planners, architects, and engineers are beginning to re-visit conventional approaches in the design of military and high-security facilities. Many existing buildings, structures and facilities should be better protected against man-made explosive hazards. For this reason the designs of public/private structures and facilities are getting much more attention in recent years. This paper presents the results of experimental and numerical investigations that were conducted in order to examine the capabilities of aluminum foams in mitigating the effect of blast waves acting on reinforced concrete (RC) beams and plates. Numerical simulations of the behavior of the investigated RC beams and plates under the dynamic loads support the experimental investigation results. The numerical simulations are based on finite element commercial and in-house codes. The experimental and numerical results for both the protected and unprotected RC beams and the conclusions obtained from these experiments and simulations are presented.

One of the main research goals of the Protective Technologies Research and Development Center at Ben Gurion University of the Negev is to develop reliable numerical codes capable of accurately simulating the behavior of structures protected with aluminum foams exposed to explosion-generated blast-wave loads. To achieve this objective, the mechanical properties of aluminum foams under dynamic loads must be known. Several types of experimental investigations were carried out to obtain the mechanical properties of aluminum foams at different strain rates. The tests were conducted using different types of loads: static tests using an Instron compressing machine, dynamic tests using an Instron compressing machine, impact tests using a 400-kg impact pendulum, and shock-wave impact tests using conventional shock tubes. Plots of the volumetric strain as a function of the pressure and the strain rate were obtained, and the numerical codes were calibrated and validated with the aid of the experimental results.