New Building Scheme to Resist Progressive Collapse

In this paper, a new scheme is proposed for retrofitting RC buildings to resist progressive collapse that may result from a first floor column failure. The proposed scheme is comprised of placing vertical cables connected at the ends of beams and hung on a hat steel braced frame seated on top of the building. In case of a column collapse, the cables transfer the residual loads above the failed column to the hatbraced frame, which, in turn, redistributes these loads to the adjacent columns. A finite-element modeling and a nonlinear dynamic analysis following the alternate path method (APM), as recommended by U.S. General Services Administration guidelines, are used to assess the viability of the proposed scheme. A 10-story RC building designed according to Australian Standard AS 3600 was adopted in the investigations. The investigation results demonstrate the possibility of preventing the progressive collapse of RC buildings by implementing the proposed scheme. (C) 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.