Enhancing the blast resistance of building walls is a research hotspot in the field of anti-terrorism and explosion protection. In this study, numerical simulation and experimental verification were combined to analyze the failure phenomenon of brick masonry wall and sprayed polyurea-reinforced brick wall under contact explosion and determine the failure response parameters of the wall. The failure limit, mode, and mechanism of a 240 mm wall without reinforcement and strengthened with polyurea elastomer under different strength loads were investigated. Under contact explosion, the increase in the size of the blasting pit of the 240 mm wall gradually slowed down after the dose was increased to higher than 0.5 kg. Thereafter, the energy of the explosive load was released by splashing wall fragments as well as by deflecting and movement of the wall. The results show that the 240 mm walls sprayed with polyurea elastomer had outstanding anti-explosion performance because it wraps the damaged area and fragments of masonry wall inside the polyurea layer. When the thickness of the polyurea layer increases to 8 mm, the damaged area of the masonry wall decreases by 55.6% compared with that without reinforcement. The numerical simulation results were in good agreement with the experimental results.
Keywords: brick wall; explosive load; polyurea elastomer; simulation.