Energy-based criteria for assessment of box-section steel columns against progressive collapse

Abstract

Recent studies show that the evaluation of structures in the energy domain has attracted some researchers’ attention in the field of progressive collapse. Column buckling and failure energy were introduced as the energy-based criteria and can be obtained from the single-column displacement controlled analysis for progressive collapse assessment of steel structures. Accordingly, the structural performance following the columns removal scenarios can be evaluated by comparing the column’s internal energy to the energy criteria. In this paper, three-dimensional numerical simulations are conducted to investigate the buckling and post-buckling behavior of the box-section steel columns and derive the energy criteria. In addition to the simplified single-column model, to evaluate the role of beams on the derivation of the energy criteria, beams with different sections are explicitly considered in the finite element models according to the column location. The results show that the lack of explicit modeling of beams in the analysis, depending on the column’s permanent load, can lead to conservative and non-conservative results in deriving the energy-based criteria for progressive collapse assessment of steel structures.