Nonlinear Dynamic Response of a Precast Concrete Building to Sudden Column Removal

Simone Ravasini,Beatrice Belletti,Fulvio Parisi,Roberto Nascimbene,Emanuele Brunesi

doi:10.3390/app11020599

Abstract

Robustness of reinforced concrete (RC) structures is an ongoing challenging research topic in the engineering community. During an extreme event, the loss of vertical load-bearing elements can activate large-deformation resisting mechanisms such as membrane and catenary actions in beams and floor slabs of cast-in-situ RC buildings to resist gravity loads. However, few studies have been conducted for precast concrete (PC) buildings, especially focused on the capacity of such structures to withstand column loss scenarios, which mainly relies on connection strength. Additional resistance resource and alternate load paths could be reached via tying systems. In this paper, the progressive collapse resistance of a PC frame building is analyzed by means of nonlinear dynamic finite element analyses focusing on the fundamental roles played by beam-to-column connection strength and tying reinforcement. A simplified modelling approach is illustrated in order to investigate the response of such a structural typology to a number of sudden column-removal scenarios. The relative simplicity of the modelling technique is considered useful for engineering practice, providing new input for further research in this field.

Highlights

In the last decades, the engineering research community has focused on progressive collapse of reinforced concrete (RC) buildings, especially after the terroristic attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 [1]
The primary aim of this study is to investigate the progressive collapse performance of precast RC buildings, considering the influence of connections and tying reinforcement in terms of both layout and capacity for different column-removal scenarios that can be referred to as the upper and lower bounds for progressive collapse resistance estimate
The progressive collapse resistance of a selected precast concrete building is assessed through nonlinear time history analysis of fiber-based finite element models

Summary

Introduction

The engineering research community has focused on progressive collapse of reinforced concrete (RC) buildings, especially after the terroristic attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 [1]. In the context of cast-in-situ RC structures, several experimental tests were performed mainly to analyze beam [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10], beam-slab [11,12,13,14,15] and flat-slab [16,17,18] sub-assemblies Those results have shown that the main resisting mechanisms to column loss scenarios are the compressive arch and/or membrane action developing in beams and slabs under small-to-moderate displacements, as well as tensile catenary/membrane action under large displacements. In previous experimental tests on reduced-scale sub-assemblies, the effect of joint design was investigated [20,21,22] and improvements of joints were proposed to achieve higher progressive collapse performances of PC planar frames [23,24,25,26,27]. Previous test results have shown that the resisting contribution of hollow-core slabs is not negligible if topping mesh reinforcement is provided [30]

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Conclusion