Studies of missile impact with reinforced concrete structures

A programme of experiments on the impact of missiles with reinforced concrete structures has been undertaken by SRD and AEE Winfrith. The main aims are to develop and validate material models in computer codes, to assess empirical design formulae, and to confirm experimental techniques for the scale modelling of reinforced concrete. The programme is generic in nature, but has been formulated to cover a wide range of potential plant missiles. Experiments are generally at a scale of between 1:4 and 1:25, and represent potential missiles of both rigid and deformable nature, of weights from a few kilogrammes to 25 tonnes, and of velocities from 10 to about 250 ms-1. The experimental installation is at AEE Winfrith; it includes a compressed air launcher capable of projecting missiles with an energy up to 1 MJ, and a comprehensive system for the acquisition and analysis of high speed transient data. A laboratory is devoted to the construction of model target structures in reinforced microconcrete; particular attention is paid to control and test procedures. A short finite difference computer code, SARCASTIC, has been written to serve as a vehicle for the assessment of different theoretical constitutive models for concrete. One particular model is described. Experimental results are presented for several impacts, and are compared with the computer code predictions. (author)