Evaluation of the performance of the reinforced concrete column under the influence of the load caused by the explosion of the CNG capsule of cars

With the increasing cost of petrol for Iranian customers, the interest in using dual fuel cars is increasing widely. It is common to use CNG vessels in Iranian dual-fuel cars. Nowadays there are millions of CNG vessels with more than 10 years of Commissioning time in Iran. In this study, the burst CNG car tank performance of steel reinforced concrete (RC) columns was numerically investigated with Abaqus software; and using Phast software for modeling equivalent TNT force exertion. Recently, the number of explosions of CNG tanks is increasing which has caused a lot of casualties and financial losses. In this study, the effect of CNG tank explosion on the Reinforced concrete column was investigated by considering four variables, including the distance between the CNG tank and column, reduction of the resistance of the car body, strength of concrete, and dimensions of the column’s section. Investigations showed that the most effective parameters according to the changes of the examined parameters are 1) distance between CNG tank and column and reduction of the resistance of the car body 2) section area of a column and 3) strength of concrete as, by increasing distance from 50 to 130-centimeter the maximum displacement decreased 63 %, by decrease the resistance of the automobile body to 80% the maximum displacement decreased 64%, by change strength of concrete from 20 to 40 Mpa the maximum displacement decreased 15% and by increase section from 35×35 to 50×50 cm2 the maximum displacement decreased 45%.