Engineering News by You :: Better understanding Progressive Collapse in Buildings

Senior board member | 2007-12-06 15:20:06

This opens up a whole new set of "what if" scenarios - the research guys are going to be breaking new ground with this one. In some regards it reminds me of shipbuilding and the way the large ships are compartmentised. So that parts of the hull can be damaged, but the rest of the vessel has enough structural integrity to keep the ship afloat - I can see that a similar approach needs to be taken

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Raz ()

Newbie | 2007-12-06 15:27:24

yep, with the terrorist threat these days, this becomes a very important consideration - i look at the congestion in most cities in the world with high rise office buildings and apartments and the "what if" question probably doesn't get asked enough times
I don't know what software is out there - but a program to simulate a building collapse would be good - maybe they are already on the market

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Pat ()

Newbie | 2007-12-06 15:39:52

there are an awful lot of variables to look at - fire, explosion, chain reactions were a weakness will travel through a structure, corrosion, loading, will it topple, explode, implode - absolutely fascinating - how do i get involved ?

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Raz ()

Newbie | 2007-12-06 17:03:58

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~kapilk/research/Dissertation-Summary-rev5.html
an interesting look at a steel structure collapse -
It seems that previously, the major thinking has been on concrete structures and its easy to see why, - but steel gives a whole new set of variables and then if we combine steel and concrete !! - there is a need for a lot of thinking and a lot of work - but at the end of the day - trying to predict what, where, how, when and in what combination explosives or a similar action could ocur is a fairly immpossible task

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Sheena ()

Newbie | 2007-12-06 17:08:06

it might be difficult, but so is pulling bodies out of collapsed buildings - it will be progressive - maybe it is possible to compartmentise a building? I think that a lot of theory and practical simulation, models, etc is going to be required and then it's just the starting point - at every chance or disaster, we will learn more and incorporate the learnings into the next designs

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Tezza ()

Newbie | 2007-12-06 19:43:04

I'm an engineering contractor and working on a brownfields site - there is a manufacturing plant in a number of very old buildings - some of these buldings are being demolished. A very interesting situation as one side of a wall is working plant and the other side of the wall is a building being demolished - What has this got to do with this article ? well the buildings are about 100 years old and all built of brick some of them up to maybe 150 feet high - typically the walls are 3 bricks wide with concrete columns etc -
my point is - how would this type of construction cope with explosives or some other form of "loss of integrity" at the bottom
The demo guys are working from the top down because of the need for control but my gut feel is that with a brick or modular construction, the loads would be transfered to the structure which remains standing and not result in a total collapse. Obviously bricks would not be practical for a multi storey high rise, but some other form of modular construction ?

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