Progressive collapse assessment of structures

The collapse of buildings over the last century as a result of abnormal loads has renewed interest in the field of structural engineering. Key events such as the disproportionate collapse of the Ronan Point building in London, the collapse of the Alfred Murray Building and the World Trade Centre are structural failures that have triggered more research into progressive collapse. Consequently, new design guidelines around the globe with a prescriptive recommendation for improving structural integrity based on tying force provision have been developed. However, in existing design guidelines and codes throughout the world, there is a lack of a codified modelling technique for progressive collapse. As a result of this limitation, researchers adopt different methods. Generally, during the progressive collapse, structural members experiencing significant displacements and rotations, while the beam-column connections are subjected to large tensile forces not envisaged at the conventional design phase.
Hence, this study presents an assessment of the effect of column removal time, the modelling techniques and the susceptibility of simple connections designed to Eurocode 3 Part: 1-8 to progressive collapse.
A computationally efficient approach and column removal time for progressive collapse assessment are proposed. The findings show that a braced framed system is likely to exhibit at least 35% progressive collapse when compared with a moment resisting frame system using the joint displacement and rotation criteria. Furthermore, the research shows that the UK tie provision in EN1991-1-7 underestimates the magnitude of the catenary force developed under the progressive collapse scenario. Consequently, the connection is disposed to progressive collapse with the shear force in the column and catenary action in the beam as the critical internal forces. Based on this assessment, five times the tensile force specified in EC3 for tensile force connection design checks is recommended. Shear force in the column and catenary force action in the beam are the internal governing forces that determine the maximum dynamic amplification factor of a simple connection. The work provides evidence that the tie beam-column web connection at the corner column is more critical under progressive collapse scenario as compared with the primary beam. Column web failure in yielding is attributed to the large catenary force developed in the tie beam connected to the web of the column.