The Role of Façade Materials in Blast-Resistant Buildings: An Evaluation Based on Fuzzy Delphi and Fuzzy EDAS

Abstract

Blast-resistant buildings are mainly used to protect main instruments, controllers, expensive equipment, and people from explosion waves. Oil and gas industry projects almost always include blast-resistant buildings. For instance, based on a hazard identification (HAZID) and hazard and operability (HAZOP) analysis of a plant, control rooms and substations are sometimes designed to withstand an external free air explosion that generates blast over pressure. In this regard, a building façade is considered to be the first barrier of resistance against explosion waves, and therefore a building façade has an important role in reducing a building’s vulnerability and human casualties. In case of a lack of enough resistance, explosion waves enter a building and bring about irreparable damage to the building. Consequently, it seems important to study and evaluate various materials used in a façade against the consequences of an explosion. This study tried to make a comparison between different types of building facades against explosion waves. The materials used in a building play a key role in the vulnerability of a building. In this research, a literature review and the fuzzy Delphi method were applied to find the most critical criteria, and then a fuzzy evaluation based on the distance from the average solution (EDAS) was applied in order to assess various materials used in building facades from the perspective of resiliency. A questionnaire was presented to measure effective indices in order to receive experts’ ideas. Finally, by implementing this methodology in a case study, it was concluded that a stone façade performs much better against explosions.