The use of vehicle bombs to attack city centers has been a feature of campaigns by terrorist organizations around the world. A bomb explosion within or immediately nearby a building can cause catastrophic damage on the building's external and internal structural frames, collapsing of walls, blowing out of large expanses of windows, and shutting down of critical life-safety systems. Concrete column as a key structural member can be subjected to a blast load as a result of an accident or a terrorist threat. The analysis and design of structures subjected to blast loads require a detailed understanding of blast phenomena and the dynamic response of various structural elements. In this paper, the response of RC frames subjected to lateral blast loads is examined and have been compared with concrete shear wall system. A nonlinear finite element program is used to model RC frames and concrete shear walls with different storey conditions. Displacement, stress, damage type and strain energy in framed and shear wall models under blast load are compared.
