On the ballistic and blast load response of a 20 ft ISO container protected with aluminium panels filled with a local mass — Phase I: Design 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 a shortest possible period of time. As in most cases, long-distance transportation of the protective elements is required, and the weight of the system is thus a critical parameter. This paper presents the development of a new, cost-effective and lightweight protection concept for a 20 ft standard ISO container to be used as shelter in international operations. The work was carried out in six major steps. First, the many requirements for such protection systems were established. Then the basic concept idea, which in this study is an extruded aluminium panel filled with a granular material, was formulated. Next, the ballistic perforation resistance of both empty and mass-filled panels was determined experimentally for specified small-arms ammunition threats. In the next step, the panels were assembled to a protection wall and fixed to the container, and the global system was exposed to specified blast loadings using numerical simulations. Then, based on the many requirements and the findings from the experimental ballistic tests and numerical blast simulations, a design of a protection system for a 20 ft ISO container was proposed, before a prototype was constructed and built. Finally, the protection system was full-scale ballistic and blast tested under realistic conditions to validate the concept. In this paper, the steps associated with the design phase will be described, while the validation phase will be presented in an accompanying paper.