Blast energy absorption of composite tubes for sacrificial cladding structures

Close range free air blast tests have been conducted to understand the energy absorption behaviour of glass polyester composite tubes. Two different shapes circular and hourglass were chosen for the study. The idea is to make a sacrificial cladding structure out of these composite tubes to protect the main load bearing members of civil engineering structures from the air blast load.. To conduct such an air blast test a special small-scale test set-up was designed and manufactured. The effect of outer skin panel inertia on the energy absorption of a core structure (composite tubes) was studied. Tests have been conducted with different set-ups (made of aluminium and sandwich composite materials) with different masses which represented the outer skin panel of proposed sacrificial structure. Furthermore, the influence of finite surface area of outer skin panel on the clearing of reflected pressure waves was also studied. Finally this study concludes that the composite tubes can be considered as potential members to protect the civil engi-neering structures from the air blast load.