Protective structures research at the University of Melbourne

Infrastructure engineering research at the University of Melbourne covers various subjects such as safe and sustainable structures, steel connections, high-strength concrete, earthquake engineering, dynamics of structures, and protective structures. The protective structures research group focuses on development of innovative and effective mitigation technologies for the protection of infrastructure from extreme human-caused acts and natural disasters. This paper presents the developments and future challenges in protective structures research, which falls within the scope of performance of structural components subjected to accidental or intentional blast effects, and the mitigation of these effects. The research group branches out into several key areas of interest such as performance and mitigation of structures against blast pressures, and glazing facade performance assessment under blast pressures. Developments of both analytical and experimental approaches in the key areas of interest will also be presented in this paper through a review of blast trials conducted in Woomera. Firstly, the loading characteristics were established in the blast trials and the analysis phase. Secondly, once the loading conditions were established the performance of local components (such as blast panels, concrete beams and facade components) was analysed. In this part, the performances of the modelling approach were assessed in comparison to the experimental results. The final part of this paper presents a study to establish the global behaviour of structures subjected to blast effects.