Blast Wall Analysis under Dynamic Loads: Bridging Safety and Computational Efficiency

Blast walls are essential for ensuring offshore facility safety during explosion events. Since few major accidents on platforms and drilling ships, blast wall designs have significantly evolved, with corrugated configurations now being widely adopted. This paper presents a computationally efficient finite element approach for evaluating the dynamic behavior of a corrugated blast wall designed for a major oil and gas installation in the Middle East. Two transient analysis methods—full transient and modal superposition (MSUP)—are employed to simulate the wall's response to blast loading. The MSUP method, leveraging modal decoupling and transfer function construction, demonstrates substantial reductions in computational time while maintaining high accuracy. This comparative study highlights the MSUP approach as a reliable and efficient alternative for dynamic structural analysis, offering significant benefits in engineering productivity without compromising safety.