DEVELOPMENT OF SAFETY CRITERIA FOR EXPLOSIVE STORAGE STRUCTURES

AN INNOVATIVE AND COST-EFFECTIVE APPROACH IS PRESENTED FOR DEVELOPMENT OF EXPLOSIVE SAFETY (QUANTITY-DISTANCE) CRITERIA FOR SHALLOW TUNNELS. THE APPROACH PROPOSES TO FORMULATE AND VALIDATE THE SCALING LAWS FOR Q-D INCORPORATING PROPERTIES OF EXPLOSIVES, AS WELL AS THE PHYSICAL AND MECHANICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF ENGINEERING SYSTEMS, I.E. CONCRETE, STEEL REINFORCING ELEMENTS, ETC.; AND GEOLOGIC SYSTEMS, I.E. SOIL AND ROCK MASS HOSTING THE STRUCTURES. THE FORMULATED SCALING LAWS ARE THEN VALIDATED THROUGH A SERIES OF LARGE-SCALE TESTS. THE DESIGN OF TEST SPECIMENS ARE BASED ON SCALING LENGTH, TIME, AND FORCE (MASS) SUCH THAT SIMILITUDE CONDITIONS ARE MAINTAINED BETWEEN THE MODEL AND ACTUAL STRUCTURE TO FACILITATE THE EASE OF INTERPOLATION OF THE OBTAINED RESULTS TO PREDICT PROTOTYPE RESPONSE. MOST OF THE EFFORT IN PHASE I IS CONCENTRATED TOWARDS ENGINEERING ANALYSIS OF ONE-G SCALE MODEL, IDENTIFICAITON OF PERTINENT PARAMETERS FOR FORMULATING TGHE SCALING LAWS AND PLANNING THE TEST MATRIX FOR CONCEPT VALIDATION. THE PROPOSED RESEARCH INVESTIGATION PROVIDES A POWERFUL APPROACH FOR DEVELOPING EXPLOSIVE SAFETY CRITERIA AND A UNIQUE AND COST-EFFECTIVE APPROACH FOR CONCEPT VALIDATION.