Objectives During the anti-explosion process, the deformation and damage of blast wall connectors can lead to anti-explosion failure. Therefore, it is necessary to study the structural response characteristics of blast wall connectors under explosive loading.

Methods Specifically, four load forms, namely triangular load, gradually applied load, linearly decaying load and rectangular load, are set in LS-DYNA in order to simulate the dynamic response of blast wall connectors under the condition that the energy of each applied load is equal.

Results The results show that for cases with linearly decaying and rectangular pulses, blast wall connectors are more likely to deform and suffer higher stress values. Blast wall connectors are more sensitive to gradually applied load and rectangular load, and the corresponding maximum deformation and maximum stress value can be 202.6% and 93.8% higher respectively than cases with the other two types of loads. Additionally, reverse loading conditions can lead to significant deformation, and the increment of peak pressure can induce plastic deformation under reverse pulse loads.

Conclusions This study can provide useful references for the design of blast wall connectors.