Progressive collapse analysis on modular steel construction based on a simplified joint model

Abstract

Modular steel construction (MSC), as a kind of highly prefabricated assembly building, has the advantages of high industrialization, perfect energy saving and great being environmentally friendly. Due to the special characteristics of its detail construction, there is an urgent need to study its progressive collapse resistance performance. Based on the experimental and refined simulating results, a simplified model of inter-module connection was proposed and shown to be accurate enough for capturing the collapse properties of the MSC by comparing with a sub-structure push-down test. Then the collapse responses of a typical four-story, nine-span MSC under different local failure conditions were intensively studied using the proposed model. The MSC survived in the local failure scenarios of the side-columns, the corner-columns or even the mid-modular unit. However, in the scenario of side-modular unit failure, the inter-module connections of all four stories were damaged due to excessive overturning moments, leading to the collapse of the span where the unit fails. Nevertheless, the rest part of MSC still did not collapse. Therefore, it can be concluded that the modular steel construction with inter-module connections by bolts and shear keys has good performance on progressive collapse resistance. Moreover, further research into this type of inter-module connection would be worthwhile.