Blast Resistance of Ionomer-Laminated Glass and the Effect of Negative Blast Pressure

Novel ionomer-laminated glass is popularly adopted as facades or structural elements due to its optical clarity and excellent load-bearing capacity. To better understand the behavior and failure mechanism of ionomer-laminated glass subjected to blast loading, a systematic study, including field blast tests, nonlinear dynamic numerical analysis, and pressure-impulse (P-I) analysis, was carried out. First, a series of full-scale field blast tests were conducted on 1,300 m×1,600 m×13.52 mm framed ionomer-laminated glass to investigate the precracking and postcracking responses as well as the failure mode of ionomer-laminated glass subjected to different explosions. The out-of-plane deflection fields over the panel surface were captured using the three-dimensional digital image correlation (3D-DIC) technique. A 3D solid finite-element (FE) model was developed using LS-DYNA for simulating the dynamic response of blast-loaded ionomer-laminated glass. The numerical results were compared with the test results for validation, which shows that the built model can reproduce the response of framed ionomer-laminated glass in both precracking and postcracking phases well. In addition, a P-I analysis was carried out for characterization of the influence of negative blast pressure over a wide range of blast threats. It was found that the negative blast pressure has a significant impact on the glass crack limit when the natural period of the laminated glass is in the same scale as the duration of the blast load, and an obvious influencing zone with the td/T ratio between 0.1 and 1 can be identified. The negative blast pressure has a similar influence on the interlayer rupture limit. Rebounding failure is highly likely to occur when the laminated glass is subjected to blast threats in the influencing zone. Neglecting the negative phase may result in overestimations of the blast resistance of ionomer-laminated glass at both damage levels.