Meta-materials and Blast Protection of Pipelines
Meta-materials and their design philosophy for the services of the civil engineering projects are conceptualized relatively recently, starting mainly from the previous decade. Our goal within this network is to expand their range of applications or pave the road for this, to as many fields as we are able and can imagine, in order to exploit their promising results for the structures’ protection against more hazards. For this reason, my research goal is differentiating a little bit from the usually hazard-oriented concepts and is focusing on the blast protection of the buried pipelines against surface explosion.
The concept under development, a meta-material layout placing around the pipe, is trying to be both of high performance and easily implemented in the construction site. Due to this goal, the shock waves produced by a surface explosion and affecting the steel pipelines are considered as 1D travelling shear waves, radially forced in the pipe’s periphery. The analytical calculation of the band-gaps are showing satisfying ranges in the desirable frequencies within the layout is planned to perform. A set of 8 layers, consisting of periodically placed rubber and polyurethane foam with 5cm thickness each, is adopted, in order the meta-material model to refer more το infinite structure.
The results derived from simulation of various surface explosion scenarios were very promising and the reduction of the pipe displacements in the crown and the spring line were indicating an isolation behaviour of the pipe against the blast phenomena. These results give hope that this concept may be considered as solution for the protection against the specific hazard for other underground structures too.
The meta-material layout, consisting of periodically set layers of rubber and polyurethane foam, around the steel pipe. 3D model and cross-section
*Results will be presented at the ICONHIC2022.