Influence of strain softening on spalling of concrete due to blast load

A society needs a certain readiness for different emergency situations, such as explosions within the urban community but also civil safety shelter in the case of war. Therefore, the ability to evaluate and to strengthen existing buildings exposed to new demands is of great importance. Many experiments and numerical analyses indicate that structures of fibre reinforced concrete yield a more favourable response during dynamic load conditions compared to plain concrete. In this study the effects of spalling of a concrete wall subjected to blast loads were studied for plain concrete modelled with an elastic-plastic material model. The results from the analysis show that spalling occur when cyclic loading from a pressure wave gradually increase the plastic strains in the concrete