Performance-based design of stainless steel profiled barrier blast walls

The current blast wall design guidelines do not capture the random nature of underlying parameters. The main issues are the appropriate treatment of various uncertainties in the explosion loadings and the complex blast wall behaviour considering dynamic and nonlinearity effects. To capture these effects a new methodology needs to be developed based on probabilistic reliability assessment. To address this, the present study presents a framework for performance-based assessment of stainless-steel profiled barrier blast walls. Initially, a blast wall including consideration of the upper and lower connections is developed using an enhanced APDL finite element modelling programming package. For the performance-based design, blast wall structures are studied at serviceability, damage control and collapse prevention levels. The design criteria and the maximum allowable response values are initially investigated and discussed and subsequently optimal response target values are proposed for a performance-based assessment approach under various explosion loadings (i.e. hazards).