Analysis and Design of Profiled Blast Walls

This report presents the study on the design and analysis of stainless steel profiled barriers subjected to blast loading generated from typical hydrocarbon explosions. The Technical Note 5 (TN5) issued by the Fire and Blast Information Group and a time domain finite element commercial software packages will be used for the above purposes. Particular attention is given to the plastic response of the blastwalls. Through this study, extensive discussions will be given to the adequacy of the simple design tool commonly used by the offshore industry for the analysis and design of blastwalls. In addition, appropriate guidance will also be presented on the use of the finite element numerical tool for the above purpose. This report and the work it describes were funded by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Its contents, including any opinions and/or conclusions expressed, are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect HSE policy. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. ii SUMMARY Profiled barriers have been increasingly used as blastwalls in typical offshore topsides modules to provide a safety barrier for working personnel and critical equipments. Most of the blastwalls are designed using Single Degree of Freedom Method as recommended in the design guidance Technical Note 5. One of the uncertainties in blastwalls design remains in the accurate evaluation of the explosion loading. As such, they are normally designed against a nominal pressure of 0.5 bar which often results in the elastic response of the section. However, recent large scale explosion tests on the blastwalls have shown the possibility of as high as 4 bar overpressure with a shorter duration in a typical module. Under such conditions, elastic design of blastwalls, in which most blastwalls has been traditionally designed, is no longer economical and feasible. This report presents the study on the design and analysis of stainless steel profiled barriers subjected to blast loading generated from typical hydrocarbon explosions. The Technical Note 5 (TN5) issued by the Fire and Blast Information Group and a time domain finite element commercial software packages will be used for the above purposes. Particular attention is given to the plastic response of the blastwalls. Through this study, extensive discussions will be given to the …