Since progressive collapse of tall buildings can cause enormous damage, it should be considered during the design phase of tall buildings. The progressive collapse analysis of tall buildings using finite element methods is almost impossible due to the vast amount of computing time. In this paper, applied element method was evaluated as an alternative to the finite element method. Reduced DOFs modeling technique was proposed to enable the progressive collapse analysis of tall buildings. The reduced DOFs model include only the part which is subjected to direct damage from blast load and the structural properties such as mass, transferred load and stiffness of excluded parts are accumulated into the top story of the reduced DOFs model. The proposed modeling technique was applied to the progressive collapse analysis of 20-story RC building using three collapse scenarios. The reduced DOFs model showed similar collapse behavior to the whole model while the computing time was reduced by 30%. The proposed modeling technique can be utilized in the progressive collapse analysis of tall buildings due to abnormal loads.
Han-Soo Kim, Hae-Hwan Wee (2014) Reduced Degree of Freedom Modeling for Progressive Collapse Analysis of Tall Buildings using Applied Element Method. Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute, Vol. 26, No. 5, pp. 599~606, October, 2014.