The purpose of a fire and blast resisting wall is to separate hazardous and non-hazardous areas of 
the topside and to protect people and vital equipment from the effects of gas explosions.
The unique thing about fire and blast walls is that they are designed for fire and gas explosion load only, which implies:
- High utilisation of the material is allowed for
- Significant permanent damage is acceptable
- High degree of optimisation can be achieved because of simple load and boundary conditions
- Use of accurate analysis method pays off directly in low weight
Design of fire and blast walls is based on analysis models that represent true behaviour of the structures up to and beyond the ultimate strength, i.e. predict true behaviour both in the elastic and in the plastic regime. Designing fire and blast resisting walls by using Non-Linear Finite Element Analysis (NL-FEA) implies high utilisation of the material, and a direct consequence/ pay-off is a low weight. Therefore it is important that the FE models predict the structural strength as accurately as possible, so that one can rely on the results produced by NLFEA. This is possible by:
- Representing the geometry and boundary conditions accurately
- Using best possible material data available.
The advantages of using the FE-method when designing a fire and blast resisting wall are:
- The total production cost of the wall is reduced, i.e. lower structural weight.
- The structural response assessment of the wall is correctly and accurately documented
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