Briefing: Modelling for cost-effective resilience against blast Available to Purchase

For owners of everything from hotels to nuclear licensed sites, mitigating the potential risks of blast is of paramount importance, not only to minimise the risk to human life and in doing so discharge their legal obligations to reduce risks to as low as reasonably practicable, but also to ensure resilience in their enterprises. Identifying what design changes or mitigation measures need to be introduced in a given building is a complex task, and depends on the widely varying characteristics of the blast threat – whether caused by terrorist action or by accidents arising from process failures. This mitigation can be very costly; therefore, an accurate assessment of the potential damage can help ensure measures are taken appropriate to the level of risk. Frazer-Nash has recently been using high-end computer modelling techniques that allow the potential effects of a blast in a range of sensitive locations to be analysed, for the purposes of assuring hotel designers that their buildings will provide a suitable level of resilience to terrorist attack. This utilises techniques previously considered the preserve of the defence sector over the past two decades and more, using dynamic finite-element analysis to look at blast effects on a wide range of structures.