Building Robustness Research during World War II

This study reviews research carried out in the U.K. to understand and improve the robustness of buildings when subject to blast from high explosive bombs. The work concentrates on the performance of ordinary civilian buildings, with particular emphasis on multistory buildings framed in either reinforced concrete or structural steelwork. At that time, some of the data were used to enhance conventional building construction, principally on government buildings, and some were used to aid postwar hardened building construction. The two main U.K. researchers whose work is the basis of this paper (Professor Sir Dermot Christopherson and Professor Lord Baker) identified a number of building weaknesses that led to local or progressive collapse, including connections in steel-framed buildings, as well as detailing weaknesses in reinforced concrete constructions. This paper reviews these features, as well as those that added resilience to bomb damage, with particular emphasis to the use of masonry infill panels in framed buildings. Much of the information on building performance is relevant to today’s engineers engaged in the design of buildings to survive blast from terrorist attacks involving a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device.