LAUSR

Abstract To investigate the explosion resistance performance of high-strength reinforced concrete (RC) beams and analyze the effect of high strength reinforcement on the dynamic response and damage characteristics of RC beams, comparative experimental research of three groups of high-strength RC beams and ordinary RC beams under different uniformly distributed blast loads are conducted in this paper. The P–I damage curves of two kinds of RC beams are established with the maximum tensile reinforcement strain as the damage criterion. The damage assessment of RC beams under various test conditions is carried out, and the assessment results are compared with the test results. The results show that high strength reinforcement can effectively improve the explosion resistance performance of RC beams under blast loads by reducing the deformation of components as well as the length and width of cracks. The damage evaluation results of RC beams according to P–I curves agree well with the experimental results, which indicates that the P–I curves established by using the steel strain of mid-span section as the damage criterion of RC beams can accurately evaluate the failure of the high-strength RC beams under the explosion loading. The research results provide references for the application of HTB700 high strength reinforced concrete beams in the explosion resistant field of civil engineering and the damage assessment of components.