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Full Program » During the last decades, the trend of new tall and slender buildings has made its appearance. Although remarkably impressive, these new tall and slender buildings pose a great challenge from the engineering mechanics point of view. Apart from the challenging design of the intact structure, the progressive collapse analysis of such buildings is also very important mainly due to the undesirable and immense consequences of a potential collapse. The loss of a member can compromise the stability of an entire structure and lead to its ultimate progressive collapse and this phenomenon can be profoundly more important in the case of super-tall and slender buildings especially when their aspect ratio is very high. This paper examines the response of tall and slender buildings to the unexpected appearance of an extreme local damaging event. The damage scenario follows the widely accepted notion of key element removal as described in the Unified Facilities Criteria of the Department of Defense [1]. Several 3-D tall steel structures were analyzed and their push-down curves indicated a critical long-wave instability collapse mode which was activated without any individual component failure. The results demonstrate that this type of structures are vulnerable to a progressive collapse mode which has not received the adequate attention from the community. The complete absence of any individual component failure makes the detection of this collapse mode very difficult, because traditionally progressive collapse methods focus on individual member safety rather than overall system safety.

[1] DoD (2009). Unified Facilities Criteria (UFC). Design of buildings to resist progressive collapse. Department of Defense, USA.

Author(s):

Maura Torres
Columbia Universtiy
United States

Simos Gerasimidis
Columbia University
United States

Professor George Deodatis
Columbia University
United States

Dr. Mohammed Ettouney
Weidlinger Associates
United States