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American response to the threat of terrorism began following the bombing in 1983 of the US Embassy and Marine Barracks in Beirut. The US Department of State instituted a program of structural hardening to protect US posts abroad. Starting with technical approaches that had been developed for Cold War threats, explosive testing and computational methods were adapted to identify and reduce hazards from chemical explosives of the type available to terrorists. Acts of terrorism within the United States, including the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and destruction of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, prompted further technical developments that strived for protection while retaining architectural features including high ceilings, open sightlines and glass curtain walls. Public buildings such as courthouses and some iconic structures were strengthened.
Following Sept. 11, 2001 the scope of protection widened to include bridges, tunnels and transportation terminals. Engineering for protection benefited from lessons learned by the earthquake engineering community. These lessons include the importance of detailing; the need for creativity within consensus-based standards; and performance-based design criteria within a framework of formal risk assessment. Standards have been prepared by such public agencies as the General Services Administration. Development of design guidelines to resist progressive collapse is in process. There is discussion of closer coordination between structural design and fire protection. The potential cost of strengthening the large inventory required prioritizing projects using screening and probabilistic risk assessment methods.
This lecture will trace the development of technology for protecting civilian structures against explosive threats and illustrate applications with examples from the open literature. Suggestions as to future directions will be offered.
Location: Sinclair Lab Auditorium, Lehigh University, 7 Asa Drive, Bethlehem, PA, USA.
For more information go to: http://www.lehigh.edu/frkseries
Please contact Leslie Ladick at 610.758.6123 or ljl2@lehigh.edu
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