Near-field explosion effects on reinforced concrete columns: an experimental investigation

Explosion effects on structures have been an area of active research over the past decades. This is due to the increasing number of terrorists’ action against infrastructures. Although significant amount of work is continuing on the effects of explosions on infrastructures, experimental work involving live explosion testing is limited. Moreover, experimental testing of reinforced concrete (RC) columns subjected to near-field explosions is scant. This paper presents results of an experimental program designed to investigate the effects of near-field explosions on RC columns with different tie spacing and at different scaled distances. The results show that the response of columns is strongly dependent on scaled distance. As the scaled distance increased the severity of damage reduced; seismic columns showed better response. The effect of axial loading was also observed to increase the level of damage on reinforced concrete columns at the axial load level and blast loads considered in the test program.