9/11, 2005: A Case Study

Blast loads have received more attention in recent years since the events of September 11, 2001 because of accidental or intentional events related to important structures. The police officers at the bomb squad department are mainly responsible for ensuring the safety and protecting communities from hazard of any explosive charges. They work under hard circumstances and they deal with suspected items every day that result in large number of injuries and fatalities between those police officers. The main risk of these charges is mainly affecting the police officers of bomb squad department. Generally speaking, the consequences of explosive charges are incident and reflected pressure, primary and secondary fragments, debris, fireball and crater.
These consequences can cause collapsing of the whole structure, loss of life and injuries.The number of injuries and fatalities between those police officers is deriving the need of MEC. The main purpose of the MEC is to contain the blast waves and the explosive material to protect the society against blast wave effects. The analysis and design of structures subjected to blast loads require a detailed understanding of blast phenomena and the dynamic response of various structural elements. The Finite Element Analysis programs become widely used to simulate and describe real life situations in a similar way. This paper represents a numerical analysis and design of a MEC subjected to internal blast loads, using ANSYS AUTODYN commercial software.