Soil-filled perimeter walls under blast

Abstract Soil-filled gabion systems can be used in many civil applications such as retaining walls against flooding and erosion or shoreline protection. In addition, the gabion systems provide good resistance in high dynamic loading scenarios such as blast events. These systems allow for a modular setup of easy-to-use perimeter walls with variable height and cross section, application as a gravity wall, and use of local filling material. The latter is the subject of the present paper. Depending on aggregate size and morphology, size distribution, and humidity, soil materials exhibit different material properties such as compaction parameters, cohesion, and the angle of friction among others. Each of these parameters directly affects the structure’s response under highly dynamic conditions. To understand the influence of varying soil parameters at varying loading conditions and thus to predict the structure’s behavior precisely, the authors investigated soil-filled perimeter walls experimentally and using hydrocode simulations. Since the soil’s properties primarily influence the wall’s behavior—at the resistance side—an extensive laboratory test campaign was required to characterize different soils. The experimental data serve for the derivation of dynamic material models and are complemented by numerical simulations. Furthermore, this paper describes the execution of near-field detonation and shock tube tests of soil-filled perimeter walls to analyze their load-bearing behavior under blast load. The experiments are evaluated with regard to the failure mechanism as well as the blast mitigation. Additionally, the blast mitigation effect is numerically investigated and the results are compared to the experiments.