[californiadisasters] UCSD Blast Simulator to Test New 'Shield'

UCSD blast simulator to test new 'shield'

By Gary Robbins
San Diego Union-Tribune
August 19, 2011

UC San Diego engineers will use the school's blast simulator at Scripps Ranch Wednesday to stress test a type of wall panel that might be useful for everything from protecting troops in combat zones to shielding civilian office workers during a terrorist attack.

The 10-foot high barrier is composed of high-performance concrete and steel studs that will essentially be pushed and pulled by actuators at the Engelkirk Structural Engineering Center. The stress test takes 3 to 5 miliseconds, or less time than it takes a person to blink an eye. The pressure applied by the actuators will be roughly the equivalent to the blast from a car bomb located 50 feet away.

"The test will emulate an explosion -- without the fireball," said Gil Hegemier, chair of the department of structural engineering at UCSD.

The research is being done on behalf of the Technical Support Working Group, which carries out studies for the U.S. Department of Defense and the Department of State.

The blast simulator was installed at UCSD after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 to improve the scientific community's ability to study the nature of explosions, and how to protect against them. It is large enough to simulate the sort of explosion that killed 168 people when Timothy McVeigh set off a truck bomb outside the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1995.

The work done at the simulator "has a lot of military applications, but we've found that they can also be applied to finding ways to mitigate damage at critical government and commercial buildings," said Hegemier, who went to Ground Zero shortly after the 9/11 attacks to help study why the World Trade Center buildings collapsed.

Engelkirk also features a large outdoor shake table that is regularly used to test how structures from bridges to buildings withstand various levels of seismic shaking.

Source: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/aug/19/ucsd-blast-simulator-test-new-shield/?sciquest

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