Lucia Figuli

• Associate Professor
• University of Žilina, Faculty of Security Engineering

The paper describes different experimental measurements of ANFO explosives made by University of Žilina, Faculty of Security Engineering with the collaboration of Military Technical and Testing Institute Zahorie.ANFO explosives are explosives made from ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. They can be in three different variants (ammonium nitrate with oil...

Every structure undergoes a maintenance lifecycle, with increasing emphasis on structural health monitoring, defect diagnosis, and repair. As the demand for timely, effective, practical, and cost-efficient solutions grows, new techniques and processes are continually being developed. The traditionally paper-based methods of bridge inspection, defec...

The issue of security currently has a number of challenges. One of the most important is global warming, another is the significant increase in the global population, cyber threats and the accelerating development of SMART technologies in connection with artificial intelligence. More than 71 per cent of the Earth’s surface is covered by seas and oc...

Nowadays, the inspection of bridges poses a significant challenge for safeguarding critical infrastructures. Recent advancements have seen the integration of robots to replace human personnel in hazardous tasks. These robots, whether operating autonomously or through tele-operation, play a crucial role in monitoring structures and infrastructure, e...

The article describes the education of students of the study programme Security Management at the Faculty of Security Engineering of the University of Žilina in the field of protection against the effects of explosives and improvised explosive devices. The content of the article is practice-oriented - requirements of practice, required competences,...

The paper threats on the critical infrastructure elements provides an up-to-date view of relevant threats that currently affect critical infrastructure and critical entities. Research in the field of resilience and protection of critical infrastructure brings daily results. The company gradually moved from stating that the activated threat caused t...

In an era marked by rapid technological advancements, the assessment of critical infrastructure resilience has also entered a new age. The incorporation of cutting-edge technologies into the evaluation process has revolutionized how we gauge the capacity of critical structures to withstand and recover from various threats, including natural disaste...

The paper solves the problems of physical protection assessment of strategic elements against terrorist attacks as one part of the problem of soft target and critical infrastructure protection. Increasing number of killed persons in the various areas of use or misuse of explosives and explosive substances (terrorist attacks, industrial accidents, r...

Most of the damage caused by an explosion is caused by a pressure effect. The magnitude of the pressure generated by the explosion is influenced by the external characteristics of the environment (surrounding objects, their arrangement, geometry, etc.) and internal characteristics (type of explosive, type of charge, booster and others). An effectiv...

Burglary resistance expresses the time required to overcome the barriers to cause the damage in order to unlawfully enter a place for the purposes of stealing property or committing a felony (i.e., disruption of important assets, e.g., critical infrastructure). Damage to the object protection system means damage to the symmetry of the system—the ba...

Recently, collapsed bridges, belonging to infrastructure networks, evidence the needs of reliable monitoring and inspection routines. Inspections can be a challenge operation in sites difficult to access; specially trained staff like industrial climbers perform the inspection routine, eventually involving large under-bridge units, elevating platfor...

The large use of glass in buildings, and especially the presence of fenestrations and facade systems, represents a potential critical issue for people safety. The brittle nature of glass (with limited elastic deformation and resistance) is often enforced by its use in combination of several secondary components, whose reciprocal interaction and pot...

Fire as one of the extraordinary load is essential to study in all its aspects. It evolve to study the fire development as well as the structural analysis of elements subjected to the fire. The present paper deals with steel beam fire resistance determination by these two approaches (analytical and numerical) and compares the results.

Blast events and scenarios, as known, represent extreme phenomena that may result in catastrophic consequences, both for humans and structures. Accordingly, for engineering applications, the reliable description of expected blast waves is a crucial step of the overall design process. Compared to ideal theoretical formulations, however, real explosi...

The current security situation in the world creates pressure to improve the pro-tection of critical infrastructure assets against negative events, such as bomb attacks, industrial accidents, explosions, or fire. The research at the Faculty of Security Engineer-ing is focusing on such extraordinary loads. The present paper analyses selected assets a...

The development of a fire in a large-space fire section differs significantly from the development in a small fire section. In large-space objects, to design structures under the fire load often proceeds through a performance-based approach. Advanced methods can be used in all parts of the design in predicting of the scatter of temperature field, i...

At the present time of political and war conflicts between countries, more and more attention is focused on the protection of important structures, being part of critical infrastructure, such as buildings of energy importance, government buildings or military bases. Regardless of the type of industry area, primarily, buildings needed to be protecte...

This proceedings volume includes articles presented during the Advanced Research Workshop on Soft Target Protection. The book presents important topics related to the protection of vulnerable objects and spaces, called Soft Targets. The chapters published in this book are thematically assigned to the blocks as follows: Theoretical aspect of soft ta...

The standard windows can be enhanced with safety foil. This types of foils are usually used for car windows. The paper shows how can the composite system created from glass plate and safety foil improve the mechanical resistance. The main task is to determinate affecting parameters for the impact or dynamic resistance. The various methods are showe...

Nowadays glass as a structural material is spread use not only for buildings in form of façade, windows and columns, but as well as for the protection of displays of electronical devices, or windows used in aeroplanes. In all cases is essential to describe the behaviour of glass panels under the high velocity soft impact caused for example by bird...

Currently, windows and glass facades are increasingly being used as a building envelope. These are elements that are functional and aesthetic, but there is a need to focus on their safety. Windows as a part of protection system are one of the most vulnerable assets, so they need to be addressed. The paper is focused on the experimental investigatio...

in the current century, building protection is very important in the face of terrorist attacks. The old buildings in Europe are not sufficiently resilient to the loads produced by blasts. We still do not fully understand the effects of different explosives on buildings and human bodies. [1-3] computing blast loads are different from that of traditi...

sszefoglalás Az épületek védelme századunk egyik igen fontos feladata, mivel egyre fokozódik a terrorfenyegetés. A történelmi, több száz éves épületek robbantással szembeni biztonságának megvalósítása fokozottan fontos feladat, hiszen köréjük a városkép és a városszerkezet miatt kerítést, falat emelni nem lehet. A robbanások jelentős károsodást oko...

The International Conference on Structural and Mechanical Engineering for Security and Prevention (ICSMESP 2017, 14 – 16 June, 2017, Prague, Czech Republic) was a forum for researchers in all related engineering areas connected to the security, reliability and prevention of the various technogenic incidents. The topics of this collection include ne...

This proceedings volume includes articles presented during the Advanced Research Workshop on Soft Target Protection. The book presents important topics related to the protection of vulnerable objects and spaces, called Soft Targets. The chapters published in this book are thematically assigned to the blocks as follows: Theoretical aspect of soft t...

The goal of this work was to invent a high energy absorbing composite material. This composite needs to be able to attach on the building's surfaces and increase blast-resistance. In this innovation, the test samples were reinforced with aramidfiber, glass fiber and carbon fiber and tested by Charpy pendulum impact testing machine. During the tests...

Full collection, visit also: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ace/si/624623/

This ADAP 2019 Annual Issue follows and extends the ADAP Special Volume of 2018 and aims at providing a further insight into current trends and recent advancements in design and analysis, experimental testing, and modelling of protective structures.

Given the typical features of glass fenestrations and façade systems, and their common use in buildings with several classes of use, the research on their impact resistance represents a key task for the protection of people. In this regard, the paper focuses on the experimental analysis of the impact performance and resistance of ordinary glass win...

Among the priorities of the Slovak Republic we consider the protection of elements of critical infrastructure, indispensably including the transport infrastructure, which has to be constantly improve and modernize. Researching the protection of these elements, part of the researchers is focusing on ways to protect assets from the blast effects. An...

The article deals with safety assessment of the building which can be considered as soft target. The building can be a place of the future bomb attack. The article specifies assessment of such blast loaded structure based on the maximal value of the pressure on the window, as crucial part of structure, and the level of possible injury of people. At...

The workshop is aimed to solving problems in areas of Soft Target Protecting and is going to be organized in parallel with Future Forces Forum 2018. This event is a highly recognised international in defence & security field organised biennially in Prague and officially supported by the Czech Ministry of Defence, Armed Forces, Ministry of the Inter...

In the current century, building protection is very important in the face of terrorist attacks. The old buildings in Europe are not sufficiently resilient to the loads produced by blasts. We still do not fully understand the effects of different explosives on buildings and human bodies. [1–3] Computing blast loads are different from that of traditi...

Due to the industrial accidents (the effects of explosion of improvised explosive devices or gas) or other unexpected events, heavily damaged buildings represent threat to environment. Generally, their damage is so serious that their reconstruction is not considered and the only solution is a demolition. Advantageously emergency shaped explosive ch...

More than 95 % of all the terrorist attacks are carried out using the ANFO explosives. The ANFO explosives are explosives made from ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. They can be in three different variants (ammonium nitrate with oil, ammonium nitrate with oil and aluminium powder or ammonium nitrate with oil and TNT). This paper describes analysis of...

The objective of this ADAP Special Issue volume is to provide an overview on the current trends and recent advancements in terms of design and analysis, including experiments and modelling, on protective structures. ...

Problems of fatigue life prediction of materials and structures are discussed in the paper. Service loading is assumed as a continuous loading process with possible discontinuous events, which are caused by various operating conditions. The damage in a material is due to a cumulative degradation process. The damaging process is then represented eit...

Glass has been overwhelmingly used for windows and facades in modern constructions, for many practical reasons, including thermal, energy, light and aesthetics. Nevertheless, due to the relatively low tensile strength and mostly brittle behaviour of glass, compared to other traditional materials, as well as to a multitude of interacting structural...

With the increase in terrorist attacks in recent years, the effects of explosions on building become highly topical. In this regard, the paper deals with the analysis of blast loaded steel structures. When a blast loaded structure is analysed, as known, two major design issues and scientific challenges have to be approached and solved. The first is...

Paper is focused on the important aspects of the deployment and the use of intelligent transport systems in road transport. Intelligent transport system are one of the tool how to increase the security of one of the sectors of critical infrastructure – transport. The paper defines the concept of traffic safety and assesses the current condition of...

The proposed paper is focused on the different approaches to protection of critical infrastructures. It compares the ways of protection of essential areas for human lives and society in France and Slovakia. It is focused on the Slovak and France legislation about the critical infrastructure, analyses the common features, differences and the methods...

The paper deals with the analysis of structure subjected to the blast load created by the explosion of ANFO explosives (ammonium nitrate and fuel oil). The paper presents the influence of blast wave idealisation on dynamical analysis of structure. Steel beam is loaded by different blast load model representing different ways of approximation of bla...

Blast load represent an exceptional condition which is usually neglected in the design of ordinary buildings. Recent terrorist attacks, however, have shown that explosion can typically result in massive damage or failure of buildings or part of them, with severe number of injures. In this regard, windows, fenestrations and facades represent the mos...

The presented paper is focused on the practical aspects of retrofit technique used for blast protection of buildings. It presents the summary of various retrofit techniques.

In the area of terrorism, there are many methods of attack. Among the most destruction it includes the use of IEDs. IED equipment is placed or made improvised way in which the active substance is explosive. The explosive is usually located either in bulk or in metal packaging (tube or artillery shell). When an explosion occurs in addition to standa...

Last terrorist attacks have shown, that among so called soft targets of attackers are included places with the concentrated mass of innocent people. Among such a places belong theatres, concert halls etc., having a seat in historical buildings. Historical heritage is important part of every nation self-conscience, pride and memory. Many historical...

The aim of solved problem is a development of a new invasive means for improvised explosive devices deactivation. The idea is a quick and reliable disposal of improvised explosive device with construction system as a tube bombe. Such tube bomb has to be deactivated, dismantled and to do not explode. The development of shaped – cumulative charge was...

The aim of the paper is to provide an expert opinion on the issue of charge size estimation of used explosion weight according to the caused damages on the sourronings buildings. The research is focused on the analytical approach of setting the weight of explosives used in explosive improvised devices, using a current state-of-art of blast pressure...

Retracted article: Theoretical assessments are given for the use of the through-transition technique of broadband ultrasonic spectroscopy to determine porosity of heterogeneous materials. Experimental measurements of local porosity of composites using the through-transition technique are presented. Dependences of elastic moduli on the concentration...

The increasing number of terrorist attacks brings the need to research on the blast resistance of buildings and transportation systems. Most of those attacks are lastly concentrated on the so called “soft targets” as railways stations, airports, bus stations, shopping centers, etc. In them, high vulnerability is frequently given by fenestrations or...

SGAMR cover (In. J. Struct. Glass Adv. Mater Res.) https://thescipub.com/sgamr

Paper is focused on the important aspects of the deployment and the use of intelligent transport systems in road transport. Intelligent transport system are one of the tool how to increase the security of one of the sectors of critical infrastructure - transport. The paper defines the concept of traffic safety and assesses the current condition of...

Explosion of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) is accompanied with various effects on buildings near the source of explosion. The most destruction character from the effects, the blast and effects of debris is. The amount of the blast pressure generated by the explosion has an important influence on the ways of protection of objects and for the s...

As a blasting agent in the blasting and mining engineering, has been using one of so called new generation of explosives which offer greater flexibility in their range and application, and such explosive is ANFO. It is type of explosive consists of an oxidiser and a fuel (ammonium nitrate and fuel oil). One of such ANFO explosives which are industr...

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the influence of geometry of charges on the propagation of blast waves. Various shape charges (cylinder, sphere, irregular shape) were used in the field tests. The main type of explosive, homemade ANFO (Ammonium nitrate + fuel oil), was used as the most common used explosives in improvised explosive device...

The paper is focused on the research of effects of improvised explosive devices (in the form of suicide belt, vest, car etc.) using home-made ANFO (ammonium nitrate and fuel oil) explosives as a body of the IED. ANFO explosives is chosen due to its spread using in the terroristic attacks. Field test of ANFO explosives are described in the paper. Th...

With the increase in acts of terrorism, the effects of the explosion on structures has become highly topical. The aim of the paper is an analysis of various approaches to determine the response of blast loaded reinforced concrete pillar. Homemade ANFO (Ammonium nitrate + fuel oil) explosive will be a reference explosive. Such type of explosives is...

With the increase of terrorist attacks it is necessary to explore the option of increasing the strength of structures against the blast wave resulted from explosion of an improvised explosive device. In our research we have focused on recyclable materials that could provide such protection and their comparison with other known materials. We present...

When the over pressure of a blast wave is calculated and its effects on valuated objects are set, many approximations are used. Basic relationships, used to calculate the maximum blast overpressure, safety distances and building damage, are created for industrial accidents or for objects where explosives and munitions are stored. This method is inv...

The paper deals with the analysis of steel beams subjected to blast load approximated as a one degree system of freedom (SDOF). It requires knowing the parameters of blast pressure wave, its effect on structure and the tools for the solution of dynamic analysis. The blast wave is estimated with linear decay and exponential decay using positive and...

This article presents some methods for recognition and modelling of bursty period of event flow. The flow of events represents generally 0/1 bit sequences. We used the Markov modulated Regular process (MMRP) and Bernoulli process (MMBP) for the description of flows with bursty period. We derived probability distribution of spaces of MMRP processes...

The paper deals with the analysis of structures subjected to blast load. Firstly are mentioned the sources of blast loading. It requires to know parameters of blast pressure wave, its effect on structure and to know the tools for the solution of dynamic analysis. There is described standards and codes background used for such loaded structures.