Blast resistant highway Bridges: Design and detailing guidelines

The possibility of terrorism against our nation’s bridges is an ever-increasing threat in

today’s society. Data collected by the Mineta Transportation Institute indicate that at least

53 terrorist attacks worldwide specifically targeted bridges between 1980 and 2006, and 60%

of those attacks were bombings. Moreover, accidental collapses of bridges in the U.S. and

terrorist attacks against bridges in Iraq illustrate the large economic and socio-economic

consequences of catastrophic bridge failures. To help ensure the safety of bridges in the U.S.

and protect the nation’s infrastructure, there is a need for design and detailing guidelines for

blast-resistant highway bridges. To address this need, the National Cooperative Highway

Research Program (NCHRP) funded NCHRP Project 12-72 to investigate highway bridges

subjected to explosive loads.

Because bridge columns are integral to nearly all bridges regardless of the superstructure

type, and because the loss of a key column could compromise the integrity of most bridges,

the research team elected to focus its effort on reinforced concrete columns. The main goals

of the research were to:

• Investigate the response of concrete bridge columns subjected to blast loads,

• Develop blast-resistant design and detailing guidelines for highway bridge columns, and

• Develop analytical models of blast-load distribution and the resulting column response

that are validated by experimental data.



http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/nchrp/nchrp_rpt_645.pdf



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