Progressive collapse is a catastrophic partial or total failure that mostly occurs when a structure lose a primary structural component or more like a column or any vertical load-resisting component. This loss could be as a result of a car accident, explosion of a service system, an aircraft crash, a bomb in a criminal or structure demolition, a missile in a military action, a hurricane, a tornado, or an earthquake, which will be our issue in this study. Progressive collapse became a hot point for research because of the several collapses that have occurred since the beginning of the twentieth century. Therefore, many international structural codes and standards started to consider the progressive collapse resistance. From the codes that discussed the issue of progressive collapse ‘Unified Facilities Criterion’ (UFC) guidelines, which will be the progressive collapse standard that will be used in assessing the structure designed according to the ‘Egyptian Code of practice’ (ECP) in this study. A 3D nonlinear dynamic analysis was performed using ‘Extreme Loading for Structures’ software (ELS), which follows the ‘Applied Element Method’ (AEM) that is capable of simulating the structures’ behavior up to collapse. A parametric study has been made to investigate the effect of the different parameters on progressive collapse. The studied parameters were the location of the removed column in plan (interior, edge, or corner), the level of the removed column (ground, 5th, 8th, and 10th), the case of loading (gravity and seismic), and the consideration of the slabs (considering and neglecting).

Elshaer, A., Mostafa, H., and Salem, H. (2016) Progressive Collapse Assessment of Multistory Reinforced Concrete Structures Subjected to Seismic Actions, KSCE Journal of Civil Engineering, pp1-11.