Investigation of ultra-high performance concrete slabs under contact explosions with a calibrated K&C model

Karagozian and Case (K&C) concrete model is extensively adopted in the numerical simulations of ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) structural members subjected to impulsive loads such as impact and blast. In this study, a calibration of the K&C concrete model was conducted for UHPC in terms of three strength surfaces, equation of state, shear dilatancy, damage evolution and strain rate effect to offer simple and general guidelines on the determination of key model parameters for this new class of concrete. With the calibrated concrete model, a single element method was adopted to verify its accuracy through a comparison to the results from the static tests of the uniaxial compression, direct tension and triaxial compression. Furthermore, the numerical simulations of contact explosion tests on the UHPC slabs with the incorporation of the strain rate effect were performed and the numerical results exhibited good predictions regarding the failure mode, crater and scabbing damage as compared to the test results. More importantly, this proposed numerical model and simulation methodology are reasonable to be generally used for structural members constructed of UHPC materials under contact explosions when lacking sufficient static and dynamic test data. Using the calibrated and validated K&C concrete model, parametric studies were conducted to derive a new empirical equation for predicting the local damage mode of UHPC slabs under contact explosions.

Automated summary

The K&C concrete model was calibrated and validated for use in numerical simulations of UHPC structural members under impulsive loads. The calibrated model was verified through comparisons with static test results and used to simulate contact explosion tests on UHPC slabs. The proposed numerical model and simulation methodology are applicable for structural design when lacking sufficient static and dynamic test data.