Robustness assessment of planar steel frames caused by failure of a side column under localized fire

Abstract

SummaryProgressive collapse of a building structure under fire is a disaster that may cause heavy casualties and serious economic loss. However, there is a lack of codified method to assess fire‐induced progressive collapse of building structures. A global–local analysis method (GLAM) has recently been proposed by the authors and their colleagues to assess progressive collapse of steel buildings under localized fire, and its application on fire scenarios that causes one inner column to fail has been verified. This paper extends the application of GLAM to fire scenarios that causes a side column to fail in a planar steel frame. The predictions of the GLAM were validated against the results obtained from nonlinear dynamic analysis of the whole frame model. Besides, effects of location of the heated column at different storeys and load level of the frame were also studied. The results show that GLAM gives the same collapse predictions to the case studies with detailed nonlinear dynamic analysis. The differences between the critical load obtained from GLAM and that provided by the nonlinear dynamic analysis is within 7%. Therefore, GLAM has good applicability on robustness assessment of planar steel frames caused by failure of a side column under localized fire.