The initial meeting of thematic area Resistance of structures to explosion effects took place in Ispra on the 15 March, and was attended by nine participants from five Member States and from the JRC European Laboratory for Structural Assessment. The group members discussed the definition of decisive scenarios, the consideration of different type of threats to structures, and the implications of combined effects (blast, fragments, and fire). A key issue identified was the comparative strengths and weaknesses of structural tests conducted with high-explosives against tests conducted using shock-tubes, and the possibilities and limitations of numerical simulations in addition to experimental testing procedures.
This thematic area is coordinated by Alexander Stolz from the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, Europe’s largest application-oriented research organisation.