Effect of underground blast on underlying ground media below substructure

Abstract

Geotechnics plays important role in building sustainable civil, pavement, and railroad infrastructure. In recent past, there is an increase in projects related to civil and industrial infrastructure which involves planning, design, and construction of buildings, pavement, railroad track, bridges, metro, and other allied fields. Since last few years, various man-made blast activities have increased which cause increase in threat. This has generated interest in foundation designers to consider effects of blast loads on design of foundations. In case of blast load, protection of human beings, structures, and housed equipment is a major concern in case of blast. Blast load sources are the explosions of penetrated missile into the ground by attack of terrorist. The other sources are the explosions carried out for construction activity, quarrying, mining activities, and soil/rock breaking. Foundation systems resting on ground media may undergo excessive settlement or distortion due to blast phenomenon which in turn may collapse the building. There are challenges in design and construction of substructure considering underground blast. Hence, proper care needs to be taken in the design for the prevention of foundation failure. Solution of geo-mechanical problem involves analysis of soil–foundation interaction which is carried out by various numerical methods. In the present paper, finite difference program Fast Lagrangian Analysis of Continua in 3 Dimensions (FLAC3D) is used for soil–foundation interaction. In the present paper, effects of blast on underground soil media have been studied. Effects of blast-scaled distances and type of soil on bearing capacity have been presented.