Due to the accompanying severe consequences of explosions, the blast puts a great threat to public security. Nonlinear finite element analysis is a possible method for civil engineers to check the integrity of the structures under blast loading without underestimating the limit of the structures. However, different choices of element types would generally put a great influence on the analytical results and the corresponding computational expenses. Therefore, how should civil engineers simplify their physical model into finite element models to gain relatively accurate numerical results with acceptable computational expenses is of great interest. In this article, 6 different types of elements are discussed with different orders and shapes for a certain physical situation, and the corresponding experimental results and the numerical results for a very detailed finite element model are used as the baseline for judgement, which could be helpful for civil engineers to make proper simplifications in the set-up of finite element models.