A performance based strategy for design of steel moment frames under blast loading

Design of structures subjected to blast loads are usually carried out through nonlinear inelastic dynamic analysis followed by imposing acceptance criteria specified in design codes. In addition to comprehensive aspects of inelastic dynamic analyses, particularly in analysis and design of structures subjected to transient loads, they inherently suffer from convergence and computational cost problems. In this research, a strategy is proposed for design of steel moment resisting frames under far range blast loads. This strategy is inspired from performance based seismic design concepts, which is here developed to blast design. For this purpose, an algorithm is presented to calculate the capacity modification factors of frame members in order to simplify design of these structures subjected to blast loading. The present method provides a simplified design procedure in which the linear dynamic analysis is preformed, instead of the time-consuming nonlinear dynamic analysis. Nonlinear and linear analyses are accomplished in order to establish this design procedure, and consequently the final design procedure is proposed as a strategy requiring only linear structural analysis, while acceptance criteria of nonlinear analysis is implicitly satisfied.