Title: Enhanced external progressive collapse mitigation scheme for RC structures

Authors: Said Elkholy; Bilal El-Ariss

Addresses: Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, United Arab Emirates University, P.O. Box 15551, Al Ain, UAE; Fayoum University, P.O. Box 63514, Cairo, Egypt ' Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, United Arab Emirates University, P.O. Box 15551, Al Ain, UAE

Abstract: This paper discusses enhancement of an external mitigating scheme to maximise the resistance of reinforced concrete continuous beams to progressive collapse due to interior support failure. The mitigating scheme using external unbounded fibre reinforced plastic straight cables and a relevant numerical model were presented by the authors in a published companion paper to predict the progressive collapse resistance of the mitigated beams. This study extends the previous work to efficiently enhance the resistance of mitigated beams by inspecting different mitigating scheme setups. Straight and deviated cable profiles are considered, different cable deviator locations are examined, and different cable deviations are accounted for to compare the corresponding mitigated beam resistance enhancements. The mitigating scheme setup that provides maximum increase in the beam resistance is considered the enhanced setup that efficiently maximises the increase in the mitigated beam resistance and could economically prevent progressive collapse of beams due to interior column failure.

Keywords: progressive collapse; collapse mitigation; mitigation setup; beam resistance; reinforced concrete beams; interior support failure; fibre reinforced plastic cables; numerical modelling; column failure; beam failure.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTRUCTE.2016.073679

International Journal of Structural Engineering, 2016 Vol.7 No.1, pp.63 - 88

Received: 23 Apr 2015
Accepted: 30 Jun 2015
Published online: 15 Dec 2015 *

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