Facts for steel Building-Blast and progressive collapse




INTRODUCTION

The terrorist attacks of 2001 riveted our attention on supposed deficiencies in our structural designs, regardless of the fact that those structures, and the structures surrounding them, actually performed well given the extreme loads to which they were subjected. While these attacks served as a call to action to reevaluate our designs for these severe loads, the fact is that practitioners in the fields of blast loads prediction and dynamic inelastic structural response prediction have been moving steadily forward on research, guideline development and design practices for extraordinary loads such as blast and impact for the past four decades. Granted, these loads and the requisite analysis and designs to resist these loads have not been “textbook” practices in the past. The complexity of the loads and response mechanisms of individual components and assemblages of components has required that the development of the design practice in this field has been one involving a mix of empirical, analytical and, recently, sophisticated numerical methods.


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