Challenge:
Hopper Engineering was requested to analyze and design a blast-resistant portable, modular building in a refinery setting. Refineries are minimizing risk by designing new buildings to be blast rated for accidental explosions. This not only protects expensive equipment stored in the buildings but more importantly, it protects lives. The client required the building to withstand a blast loading of 8 psi at 200 msec duration, allowing widespread component damage but preventing full building collapse. This specific portable module is an 8ft x 8ft x 9ft high building restroom facilities.
Resolution:
A series of equivalent SDOF calculations were performed to determine the capacity of each critical member of the building. Only “exterior” explosions were considered to determine the appropriate loads for the analysis. Neither environmental nor interior loads were considered as the aforementioned 8 psi at 200 msec blast load governs. Employing dynamic parameters such as rapid strain rate material strength, load amplification factors, and allowable plastic deformations enabled us to determine efficient sections to construct the blast-resistant restroom per client specifications.
