A new system for reinforced concrete buildings to prevent potential progressive collapse

This study presents an investigation of a new redundant system to prevent the potential progressive collapse of reinforced concrete buildings resulted from a column failure. It is proposed to transfer the residual loads upward above the failed column of reinforced concrete buildings by vertical cables connected to the ends of beams and hanged at the top to a hat steel braced frame seated on the top of the building. Then the hat braced frame redistributes the residual loads to the adjacent columns. Nonlinear dynamic analysis in conjunction with the alternate path method (APM) recommended by GSA guidelines is curried out to investigate the validity of the proposed scheme. The investigations are conducted upon a reinforced concrete building designed according to Australian Standard AS3600. The simulation results demonstrated the efficiency of the proposed method in improving the progressive collapse resistance of the adopted reinforced concrete building