Protective Structures, Protective Technologies, Explosives and Ammunition Hazards and Safety, Penetration, Blast, Fragmentation, Shock Loading, Buried Structures, Tunnels, Dynamic Analysis, Structural Dynamics, Stability, Fracture Mechanics


Researcher: David Ornai
Department:  Structural Engineering
Faculty: Engineering Sciences
E-mail: ornaid@bgu.ac.il

Prof. David Ornai is a lecturer in the Structural Engineering Department and a researcher at the Protective Technologies Research & Development Center. He is the head of a new graduate program: Advanced Protective Technologies. He is also the head of the Ammunition & Explosives Safety Center.  Ornai served in the IDF as the head of Protective Structures & Camouflage until 2005.

His main academic activities include:
The Role of Homeland Security in Israeli National Security;
Homeland Security in Israel and the Linkage to Structural Resistance against Earthquakes;
The Dynamic Resistance of Earth Covered Magazines to Blast Waves Resulting from Adjacent Magazines;
Prestressed Concrete Beams Dynamic Response Under Full Scale Blast Test;
Risk Management Model of Urban Areas near Ammunition Storage;
Response of an Ammunition Magazine to the Blast Wave from an Accidental Explosion in a Neighboring Magazine;
The Role of the Suction Phase in the Vulnerability of Structures to Large Scale Explosions;
Modal Resistant of Pre-casted RC (Reinforced Concrete) Elements to Blast Loads;
Dynamic Resistance of RC (Reinforced Concrete) Elements to Combined Air Blast and Fragment Impulses;
Enhancement of Shock Waves in a Ground Buried Explosion due to Reflections;
Dynamic Protection against medium Rockets and artillery shells with SQ fuses,
Using Robotic Technologies to Handle Explosive Charges;
Safety and Treatment Procedures of Framed RC (Reinforced Concrete) Structures after Internal Explosion due to Terror activity;

In house software programs which were developed by his team:

Ground Shock in Semi Infinite Plane: GSSIP
Blast and Fragment Loading on Structures: BFLS
Dynamic Modal Analysis of Precast Elements: DMAPE 

Projectiles Penetration into Steel Plates: PPSP
Spalling and Breaching of Reinforced Concrete: SBRC

Shock wave related phenomena; Penetration; Protective Structures

Researcher: Oren Sadot     
Department: Mechanical Engineering
Faculty: Engineering Sciences      
E-mail: sorens@bgu.ac.il

Dr. Sadot is an expert experimentalist. He specializes in high-speed phenomena such as shock waves, blast waves and their interaction with structures. Among his subjects of interest are absorbing energy materials, mitigation of shock wave induced loads by passive means, and the dynamic behavior of structures under blast wave loadings. In his laboratory he has several shock tubes capable of Mach numbers from 1.02 to 5 with different cross sections.

Shock & Blast Wave Attenuation; Protective Structures; Shock absorbing Materials & Structures; Simulation of Blast Events

Researcher: Gabi Ben-Dor
Department: Department of Mechanical Engineering
Faculty: Faculty of Engineering Sciences
E-mail: bendorg@bgu.ac.il