Blast Resistant Design Process

FIGURE 1.1 Petrochemical Buildings, Blast Resistant Design Process... 

Blast resistant design, or the structural strengthening of buildings, is one of the measures an owner may employ to minimize the risk to people and facilities from the hazards of accidental explosions in a plant, Other mitigative or preventive measures, including siting (adequate spacing from potential explosion hazards) and hazard reduction (inventory and process controls, occupancy limitations, etc.), arc not covered in this report. 

Preventing cascading events due to loss of control of process units not involved in the event is another objective of blast resistant design. An incident in one unit should not affect the continued safe operation or orderly shutdown of oilier units. 

The control room discussed in Example 2 is located 150 ft (45 m) from the nearest process equipment in the unit. Since the building occupancy exceeds the company criteria, further evaluation is required. The building was designed to be blast resistant to 5 psi (0.34 bar). 

As Figure 6.2 shows, Building 2 is potentially subject to 3 psi (0.2 bar) from Process Unit 2 and 1 psi (0.07 bar) from Process Unit 1. Since Building 2 is not designed for blast resistance, as indicated by Table 3.5, occupants could be subjected to possible injury or fatality. Therefore, Building 2 requires further evaluation. 

For buildings and elements of building structures, current design practice for explosion and blast is to use the quasi-static approach to dynamic response of the structure adopted in the CIA document Process Plant Hazard and Control Building Design , This is, in turn, based on ASCE Manual 42 Design of Structures to Resist Nuclear Weapon Effects . 

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