Effects of Bare and Cased Explosives Charges on Reinforced Concrete Walls

Book excerpt: This paper represents a summary of an extensive investigation concerning the local effects of bare and cased explosives charges on reinforced concrete walls. The investigation includes a literature search as well as several test series. As a main result, charts for the prediction and comparison of the effects of bare and cased explosives charges are developed. The most important conclusion is that cased charges result in perforation of reinforced concrete walls at distances up to ten times larger than bare charges of the same weight. Vice versa, given the charge weight and the distance, the wall thickness required to avoid perforation is up to three times larger for cased charges than it is for uncased charges. Hence, it becomes evident that simulating local effects of weapons with bare charges - as of- ten done for practical reasons - may lead to considerable underestimation of the actual effects.