Sometimes it seems that the world of blast design is a little bit like the wild, wild, west right now. As more organizations, 
institutions, and owners have become aware of the need for protecting people and places from explosions, there has been an outpouring of new – and often conflicting – criteria and guideline documents. While this will be a very good thing in the long run, in the short run it can be confusing to the people who are trying to create buildings that mitigate the effects of blasts.
One of the areas of confusion is how to designate required glass responses. In this arena, three of the most commoncategorization systems come from the General Services Administration, ASTM F1642-04, and ASCE 59-11. To date the GSA has been the default system used in most design criteria, however the ASTM F1642 is becoming more common and we expect that this will become the default in the not-too-distant future. For instance the UFC 4-010-01 DoD Minimum Antiterrorism Standards For Buildings already references the classification system in the ASTM F1642-04 (note that the 2012 version of the UFC does this directly, while the 2013 version of the UFC references the ASTM F2912, which in turn references the ASTM F1642). This is all to the good, because not only does the industry seem to be converging to an accepted consensus based standard, but the ASTM F1642-04 provides a nicely detailed description of how to evaluate the post-test condition of the window system (i.e. provides dimensions, etc).
In order to help you navigate the different classifications we have created a table showing how the systems correspond to each other – this will be provided to attendees of our Protective Knowledge – Blast Resistance By Design course in May, 2015. Click here for more information on the class