Structural Design for Physical Security

Physical security design is an engineering discipline that provides systems for safe-guarding personnel and preventing unauthorized access to equipment, facilities, material, and documents, while protecting them against espionage, sabotage, damage, and theft.

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has many years of experience in structural design, development, and testing of physical security products. Designs and concepts are analyzed for a wide variety of threats. The structural security program is complemented by Institute capabilities in electronic security and surveillance to provide turnkey security support.

Schematic illustrates a 36-inch magazine door concept for underground munitions protection.

Design

SwRI designs physical security hardware to resist attacks ranging from combinations of hand, powered, and thermal tools to vehicle impact, explosive attack, and high energy impact loading. SwRI designs include magazine doors and headwalls, windows and frames, vehicle barriers, wall panels, and other items.

Product Evaluation

Products are tested at SwRI for compliance with specifications of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Naval Facilities Command, the U.S. Department of State, the Underwriter’s Laboratory, and the National Association of Architectural Metal Manufacturers (NAAMM). The Institute also performs on-site evaluation of physical security hardware, including analytical support and testing at government facilities, correctional institutions, and sensitive commercial facilities.

Vehicle-barrier geometry is used for analysis of vehicle impact on cable barriers.

Fabrication and Installation

SwRI maintains a fabrication shop and a machine shop with lathes, mills, sheet metal equipment, grinders, and a 20-ton traveling crane with a hook height of 30 feet. Full-sized hardened magazine doors are fabricated, as are test panels and other structural components. American Welding Society-certified welders and QA/QC procedures are used in SwRI shops. Full-sized hardware, including a 30,000-pound magazine door complete with electric motor and controls, has been installed and operationally tested at several facilities.

Analysis

Structural components, including windows and frames, personnel doors, magazine doors and headwalls, and vehicle barriers, are analyzed for ability to resist physical security attacks. Analysis is performed with tools ranging from single-degree-of-freedom dynamic models and simple empirical penetration models to two-dimensional hydrocodes and static structural models of laminated glass. Pressure/Impulse (P-I) curves are developed for evaluating blast protection of building components.

Fragment simulant produces front face crater in conventionally reinforced concrete.

Literature and Product Information Resources

SwRI maintains an extensive library of technical literature pertaining to physical security, with abstracts available in a database. The Thomas Baker Slick Library located at SwRI has more than 38,000 volumes and participates in an interlibrary loan program throughout Texas and the entire U.S.

Literature searching capabilities are enhanced by subscriptions to DIALOG and ORBIT. Physical security product brochures and catalogues are also available, with manufacturer information stored in a database. SwRI compares products manufactured by several companies and has compiled a list of available test data in these products.

Computer Codes

User-friendly computer codes are developed for personal and mainframe computers. SwRI wrote the Barrier Impact Response Model (BIRM) to support the design of vehicle barriers for the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the U.S. Navy. A Blast Vulnerability Guide for blast threats also has been automated. Program documentation includes user, validation, and documentation manuals.

Ballistics Testing

Southwest Research Institute conducts tests using small arms, military and sporting rifle cartridges, fragment simulations, and large-bore weapons to 50 mm. Ballistic weapons are used to test the penetration resistance of physical security hardware, and ballistic velocities are measured using chronographs and flash X-ray equipment.

Hand Tools and Thermal Tools Testing

SwRI conducts tests with a variety of hand tools, including abrasive saws, circular saws, power drills, pry bars, sledgehammers, and axes. All tests are timed and videotaped. Oxyacetylene burn bars and kerrie cables are used to replicate severe thermal attacks.

Test wall is perforated by a simulated advanced explosive terrorist attack.

Close-in detonation of a heavily cased explosive charge breaches and deforms a test wall.

Explosive Testing

Physical security hardware is tested using a variety of explosives, including linear-shaped charges, bulk explosives, and satchel charges. Instrumentation is available to measure stresses and pressures, accelerations, and deformation. The SwRI test range is capable of testing three pounds of TNT or equivalent charge weights. For U.S. Department of Defense projects, charge weights to 100 pounds of TNT or equivalent are tested at the U.S. Army training facility at Camp Bullis, north of San Antonio.

Advanced Explosives Testing

The Institute conducts tests on physical security hardware using advanced explosives identified by the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Naval Facilities Command, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Vehicle Impact Testing

SwRI uses an inactive runway at nearby Brooks AFB to perform full-scale testing of vehicle barriers. Vehicles weighing 80,000 pounds have been tested at 50 mph on full-sized barriers. Vehicle dummies and barriers are instrumented with accelerometers to measure acceleration/deceleration forces. All tests are documented by high speed cameras. The Institute also has a pendulum test facility where masses to 10,000 pounds are used to strike a variety of barriers at speeds to 30 mph. A crushable nose cone is used to simulate the front of a vehicle.

Vehicle security barrier is crash tested using a flatbed cargo truck.

Typical Projects

• U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: Physical security, including the evaluation of entryway technology for forced entry attack; design and testing of forced entry resistant magazine doors; key asset protection products catalogue; vehicle barrier computer code; and minimum hardening measures for protection of Army facilities.
  
  
• U.S. Navy Civil Engineering Laboratory: Physical security work, including fiber-reinforced concrete headwall testing, blast vulnerability guide, and computer code development; internal blast damage procedures; design, fabrication, testing, and installation of personnel doors and magazine doors.
  
  
• U.S. Department of State: Testing the effects of ultraviolet exposure on glazing configurations and preparing a vehicle barrier computer code.
  
  
• U.S. Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratory: Forced entry testing of selected wall panels.
  
  
• U.S. Department of Energy: Security analysis and detailed design of blast doors and impulsive loading of heavily reinforced composite blast doors.
  
  
• Industry: Testing of personnel doors for compliance with NAAMM specifications and on-site inspection of personnel doors.

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