On the ballistic and blast load response of a 20ft ISO container protected with aluminium panels filled with a local mass — Phase II: Validation of protective system

In international peacekeeping operations, it is often necessary to send large amounts of equipment and personnel into highly unstable regions of the world. The troops will be particularly vulnerable in the time before and during the establishment of new camps. Therefore, it is important to get sufficient protection within the shortest possible period of time. This paper presents the development of a new, cost-effective and lightweight protection concept for a 20ft standard ISO container to be used as shelter in international operations. The work was carried out in six major steps. In this paper, the last step associated with the validation phase involving full-scale ballistic and blast tests under realistic conditions is described, while the five first steps describing the design phase were presented in an accompanying paper [Børvik T, Hanssen AG, Dey S, Langberg H, Langseth M. On the ballistic and blast load response of a 20ft ISO container protected with aluminium panels filled with a local mass — Phase I: Design of protective system. Engineering Structures 2008;30(6):1605–20]. It will be shown that the proposed system is able to meet all specified requirements with a good margin of safety.