Blast Testing of Aluminum Foam–Protected Reinforced Concrete Slabs

Abstract

Aluminum foam is a newly developed mobile and lightweight material with excellent energy absorption capacities. Applying aluminum foam as a sacrificial protection layer on the bearing faces of protected structures can mitigate blast effects on the resistance capacities of structures against impact or blast loading. The aluminum foam undergoes great plastic deformation under transient dynamic loads before becoming fully densified, making it excellent for mitigating blast effects on these structures. In this paper, we conducted quasi-static testing on two types of aluminum foam specimens and obtained the primary parameters for the mechanical properties of aluminum foam specimens. We then used these two types of aluminum foams to protect the reinforced concrete (RC) slabs, and we conducted a series of tests to investigate the performance of the aluminum foam–protected RC slabs against blast loads. We tested a total of five foam-protected slabs and one control RC slab in the blast test program. The test results, including displacement and acceleration histories, performance of specimens, and maximum and permanent deflections, were fully reported. We then discussed the efficiency of aluminum foam to mitigate blast loads on protected RC slabs.