Numerical simulation of explosive demolition of a shear wall structure apartment

In the late 1980s, wall-slab structures were applied to most construction projects for high-rise apartment buildings in Korea. Mechanical demolition of shear wall-slab structured apartments causes structural instability and generates environmental problems in the neighborhood, such as dust, noise and ground vibration during the preparatory work and the demolition process. Recently, a shear wall structured apartment has been demolished by means of an advanced explosive demolition technique that combines various collapse behaviors to minimize environmental impacts on the vicinity of the target structure. In this study, we simulated the collapse behavior of the shear wall apartment according to the blast scenario of the explosive demolition using ELS (Extreme Loading for Structures) software. The collapse behavior and diffusion area of debris obtained from the simulation results were compared with that from the actual explosive demolition experiment results.