Abstract
At the frontline of a war zone, the need for life supporting infrastructures at a Forward Operating Base (FOB) is paramount to the mission’s success. These structures must provide life safety and resiliency from direct and indirect mortar attacks to its occupants. At a FOB that is constantly being attacked, accomplishing life safety and resiliency to the structure is an extremely challenging task. Operating in a war zone environment presents limitations on the type of construction methods that can be implemented on these essential infrastructures. Due to hazardous conditions, security concerns, and timeliness of delivery, the contracted construction projects are extremely rare at a FOB site. Majority of these infrastructures are temporary construction such as tents that do not provide any protection from mortar explosion. These temporary structures are constructed by troops. The troop construction also presents with challenges such as; the quantity of proper construction materials, time, and the level of construction skills of the troops. Therefore, the need for a building shelter that accommodates these constraints will greatly improve personnel safety at a FOB. This paper explores a pre-engineered building shelter solution that can be implemented at FOBs. The pre-engineered shelters have some distinct attributes such as modularity, low assembly time, and ease of transport. This project evaluates the feasibility of a typical composite panel of the shelter. The composite panel is comprised of ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC), carbon-fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP), and aluminum honeycomb panel. Threats due to 81mm, 107mm, and, 120mm mortars were investigated. Two different blast loading cases resulted from these mortars were considered. Case-1 a standoff distance between the mortar explosion and the shelter, resulting in pressure-controlled blast loading and, Case-2 evaluates a mortar directly impacting the shelter’s panels, resulting in an impact-controlled blast loading. The blast loads were calculated according to Unified Facilities Criteria (UFC) 3-340-02. Based on finite element analysis, the shelter’s composite panel yielded a satisfactory level of protection against majority of the mortar sizes considered. It is concluded that having a standoff distance between the explosion and the shelter will greatly increase the structural reliability on this pre-engineered shelter and a direct impact loading on the shelter will causes localized damages.