Robustness of Reinforced Concrete Frames against Blast-Induced Progressive Collapse

A quantitative procedure for the robustness and progressive collapse assessment of reinforced concrete (RC) frames under blast load scenarios is presented. This procedure is supported by multilevel numerical models, including nonlinear numerical analyses of the structural response of both local (i.e., response of the single structural element to the blast load) and global levels (i.e., response of the structural system to the blast-induced damage). Furthermore, the procedure is applied to a 2D RC frame structure. The novelty of the proposed procedure is that the global robustness is evaluated by the so-called "damage-presumption approach" where the considered damages are defined both in typology and extension depending on the blast scenario occurring at the local level. The dedicated local response analysis of a specified blast scenario leads to the proper definition of the so-called "blast-scenario dependent robustness curves".