Blast Protection for Power Transformers

The University of Kentucky will collaborate with a local utility provider to develop blast mitigation solutions for critical power transformers. The National Infrastructure Protection Plan states an over-arching goal to "Build a safer, more secure, and more resilient America by enhancing protection of the Nation's Cl/KR to prevent, deter, neutralize, or mitigate the effects of deliberate efforts by terrorists to destroy, incapacitate, or exploit them; and to strengthen national preparedness, timely response, and rapid recovery in the event of an attack, natural disaster, or other emergency." Action is required to mitigate vulnerabilities and accomplish these goals. The Kentucky Critical Infrastructure Protection Program identifies the power grid as a vulnerability on many levels through the KCIPP solicitation. The target objective of the proposed project is to increase resiliency of the local/regional power grid by mitigating a potential threat to critical power transformers located within the grid. Due to the remote nature of many power transformers, they are vulnerable to external blast loading due to terrorist attack. With limited availability, and complexity of replacement, resiliency in the event of attack would currently be relatively low. With increased protection, power grid resiliency could be substantially increased by reducing or eliminating the threat of losing a critical power transformer due to an explosive attack. The target objective of the proposed project is to increase resiliency of Critical Infrastructure by limiting the effects of an explosion near a critical power transformer by creating blast mitigation systems. In order to obtain increased resiliency, four critical tasks have been identified for the project. The major critical tasks include: I. Identification and selection of threats associated with critical power transformers. 2. Development of Baseline ability of transformers to withstand blast loading. 3. Modeling and Testing of numerous materials and techniques used for blast mitigation. 4. Delivery of blast mitigation design rubric for protecting critical power transformers. The critical tasks listed above are covered in detail in further sections. The listed critical tasks will lead to the development of several deliverables. Specific blast mitigation systems will be developed to meet the overall objective; however, the generation of alternative test methods and protocols and validation of models and calculations will be additional supporting deliverables To facilitate completion of this project, funds totaling $824,969.09 are requested from NIHS over a 36 month project timeline. The project deliverables will be useful tools for increasing resiliency in critical infrastructure. 16