Recent Efforts on Blast Damage Mitigation for Dams

This paper describes collaborative research efforts conducted between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The USACE, through its U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), has focused efforts on the development of a collaborative research program to address technical gaps related to risk and blast mitigation for dams. These research efforts involve experimental and analytical tasks designed to improve blast damage prediction capabilities for dams, navigation locks, and levee systems resulting from vehicle and waterborne delivery scenarios. The outcomes from these efforts can inform USACE’s priorities, which include refining the current understanding of the effects of potential attacks, the vulnerabilities and weaknesses of its critical assets to various threat conditions, and the local and regional consequences of those attacks in order to develop appropriate protective measures and recovery technologies.