In today's turbulent world, civil engineers require methods and guidance on how to design structures to resist various accidents or hostile acts. Due to accidental explosions or bomb attacks on facilities, there is the increased concern for protection of persons on the part of facility owners and facility designers. An exterior mode attack involves the throwing or placing of explosive charges near a facility. The objective of such an attack is generally the destruction of the facility and the social disturbance. In these events, explosive weights are limited to amounts that can be carried by the person. To develop blast resistant techniques, this study is to find experimentally a local failure mode of steel plate due to close-in explosion. In explosive tests, SS400 steel plates with different thicknesses are tested under various conditions. From test results, a perforating limit line for contact and close-in explosion is formulated.
