Testing and Analytical Evaluation of Doors

The application of blast resistant design principles has become more prevalent for buildings due to risk of accidental industrial explosions and terrorist attack. This has precipitated to more attention to exterior doors subjected to blast loadings, including the publication of ASTM F2247-043 "Standard Test Method for Metal Doors Used in Blast Resistant Applications (Equivalent Static Load Method)". However, the evaluation of doors subject to blast loadings lags significantly compared to the documented analytical tools and methodologies for other structural components, as well as windows. This paper lists and compares several techniques for evaluating doors subject to blast loadings, including testing and analytical approaches. A recent research program has generated static and dynamic shock tube test results for various low-range hollow metal door types. The static data was used to develop single-degree-of-freedom models which were used to predict the door response for several dynamic tests. The comparison of the analytical predictions and test data provides a basis to adjust the dynamic model to better predict the response of the subject door. The results of the effort may allow blast designers to utilize existing static data for commercial doors to develop reasonable dynamic models for blast evaluations.