Book Description

This research was performed to obtain information on the behavior of shallow-buried cylinders subjected to static and blast loads in support of the task objective of gaining knowledge to provide guidelines for developing design methods for underground protective structures. It was especially desired to obtain data on the time and space variations of deflection, thrust, and moment under the two types of loading for purposes of making a comparison. The results show that the net arching across a flexible shallow-buried cylinder is small and that the maximum moment occurs at the bottom of the cylinder. Differences in response to static and blast loading are relatively small except for the crown, which deflects about twice as much under blast loading as under corresponding static loading. An analogy with the simple spring-mass system is drawn to explain this behavior. Information obtained on the influence of placing a low- strength isolating material in the soil over a cylinder indicates that such an expedient is of questionable benefit.