High-Fidelity Door Analysis for Blast Loading

Architects, engineers, contractors and door manufacturers have all been impacted by the recent door code updates to the Department of Defense (DoD) Minimum Antiterrorism Standards for Buildings and the Department of Veterans Affairs Physical Security Design Manual (VA PSDM).  At Protection Engineering Consultants (PEC), our engineers have expertise and experience providing design solutions in accordance with the DoD Unified Facilities Criteria, UFC 4-010-01 and the VA PSDM.  Our analyses of door systems for blast loads can demonstrate that the system will provide the required level of protection, or can provide the necessary information to support design changes to ensure that it does.

Typically, exterior metal doors are rated and certified through physical blast testing.  The changes in the design guidelines necessitate that the blast loads vary for each project, making testing impractical and possibly overly conservative. By performing high-fidelity dynamic analysis, the actual blast loads can be directly considered and standard “non-blast-rated” hollow metal doors can be shown to satisfy protection requirements, resulting in reduced cost and minimal impact to the structural design. A high-fidelity analysis considers the actual door layup including composite or non-composite behavior of the skin, connections between members, hardware support conditions, bearing and potential for slip off of the frame.  Once the analysis is complete, our engineers also specify the necessary design loads for choosing appropriate hardware.

For more information on door analysis for blast loading, please contact Greg Rolater.