Blast resistance of single steel‐concrete composite slabs under contact explosion

Abstract Terrorist attacks or contact explosions could trigger severe damage to structural components or even cause the local or global collapse of the structure in civil engineering and infrastructures. Single‐steel‐concrete (SSC) slabs consist of a concrete core and one steel faceplate combined with shear studs or tie bars that can be applied in resisting explosion or blast load. This paper experimentally and numerically studies the blast performance of the scale SSC specimens under a contact explosion. The damage modes, deflections, and acceleration response of the SSC specimens are obtained and compared by experimental and numerical methods. And then the influences of the explosive, the shear stud length, and the steel plate thickness on the damage modes, acceleration, and displacement response are studied parametrically. It is observed that both of the concrete layers in SSC slabs have crater failure at the impacted surface and steel plates occur local deformation or buckling. No penetrability failure generates in the slabs because of the existence of the steel plate, which can improve the blast resistance and decrease the maximum deflections of the specimens. Finally, an empirical equation is developed to estimate the midspan displacement of the slab using the multivariable regression method (MNRM).