Perforation analysis of reinforced concrete plates under soft impact

This paper analyses the ultimate behaviour of reinforced concrete plates subjected to "intermediate" velocity range soft impacts (strain rate of the order of 1 s(-1)). Under static assumption, the limit analysis framework is used to derive a new failure criterion in terms of stress resultant variables N, T, M. The criterion accounts for bending and shear failure modes. In beam configuration, it is obtained in a closed form. Then it is extended to the case of reinforced concrete plates. Considering dynamic phenomena during the impact and perforation, we show that the proposed static criterion can be applied to analyse bending and shear waves computed by some dynamic software in order to predict perforation. The criterion is implemented in the EUROPLEXUS fast dynamics software, developed by CEA and used by EDF for safety studies, and is validated by comparison with experimental data in static and dynamic cases.