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Pancake-type collapse : energy absorption mechanisms and their influence on the final outcome
Publikationstyp
Conference Paper
Date Issued
2013
Sprache
English
Author(s)
Starossek, Uwe
Institut
TORE-URI
Start Page
284
End Page
295
Citation
Structures Congress 2013 : Bridging Your Passion with Your Profession ; proceedings of the 2013 Structures Congress, May 2-4, 2013, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania / edited by Brian J. Leshko. - Reston, VA : American Society of Civil Engineers, 2013. - Seite 284-295
Contribution to Conference
Publisher DOI
Scopus ID
Publisher
American Society of Civil Engineers
Since the World Trade Center disaster in 2001, various theories have been proposed as to what caused the observed rapid collapse progression ending in the total collapse of both towers. According to the theory now widely accepted, the columns in the aircraft impact zone lost their load-bearing capacity due to the effects of fire. As a result, the upper part of the building fell over the height of at least one story. The resulting impact forces greatly exceeded the buckling load of the columns near the impact zone, which led to the release of a new portion of potential energy. It was also shown that the energy absorbed by the columns during buckling was significantly less than the potential energy released during this process. This led to the conclusion that the total collapse was inevitable once initial failure occurred. However, there are some examples of buildings, in which the columns of an entire story failed and no collapse progression occurred. Such cases were observed in the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan. There were also some failed controlled demolition attempts, in which a progressive collapse to be triggered by the destruction of vertical load bearing elements in lower levels did not occur. No significant deformations of vertical elements were observed in these cases. This raises the question if there are energy absorption mechanisms other than column buckling that may play a role in the structural response to initial failure. Numerical simulations of simple systems are presented showing that there are such mechanisms indeed and that column buckling is not the only possible way to absorb the energy at impact. An analytical approach based on a simplified model is also described. © 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
DDC Class
600: Technik
620: Ingenieurwissenschaften
690: Hausbau, Bauhandwerk