The Use of Composites for Blast and Fragmentation Protection of Selected Infrastructure

Abstract

Infrastructure application such as Refineries and Petrochemical Plants, Power Plant, or off shore Vessels, often require blast and fire resistance protection, and in some cases fragmentation protection as well. Contemporary threats to be taken into account involve fire or gas explosion which may accidently happened as well as attacks by blast and fragmentation warheads integrated in several types of rockets, mortars and fragmentation generated by artillery HE blast shells. Ballistic protection add–on or predesigned blast and fire resistant existing solutions are needed vastly for crew survivability. The main limitation for such solutions is their weight, especially when such solutions are supported by existing base structure. In this paper the authors will show the use of fiber composite add-on protective curtains, as well as alternative hybrid metal composite light weight wall construction with comparison to conventional steel wall , designed to certain ballistic protection requirements, including numerical simulation and live field tests evaluation tools, then derived some practical conclusions.