Historical review of prescriptive design rules for robustness after the collapse of Ronan Point

Abstract

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Dynamic performance of a real-scale reinforced concrete building test under a corner-column failure scenario

“…Murrah Federal Building (Oklahoma, 1995), the World Trade Center Buildings (New York, 2001) or, more recently, the Achimota Melcom Shopping Centre (Acra, 2012), among others [6]. Events such as these have given rise to the renewed interest of the scientific community and the international standards-issuing authorities [1,7,8] in reviewing design clauses for robustness for traditional and novel forms of construction.…”

“…Subsequently the building was also designed following the simplified method of tying forces and elements (horizontal and vertical ties) [15]. A discussion of the origins and validity of the simplified tie method can be found in [7]. All the structural members complied with the tying force…”

Horizontal Collapse Propagation of Concrete Flat Slabs Supported on Columns

“…Different well-known building collapses from World War II, Ronan Point, Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, Sampoong Department Store described in the literature (e.g. Ellingwood and Dusenberry 2005, Byfield et al 2014, Adam et al 2018, Russell et al 2019) and more recent underground car park failures in Europe (Fernández Ruiz et al 2013) show that the response to accidental events can vary significantly depending on the form of construction. One of the main reasons behind the broad range of responses is the different response of the connections in the structure which has a critical role on the propagation of failure.…”

Robustness of steel truss bridges: Laboratory testing of a full-scale 21-metre bridge span

“…These events can cause the sudden loss of local elements and trigger a cascading failure of the bridge, known as progressive bridge collapse [5]. Some progressive collapse events gained significant public attention due to the extent of damage and number of victims, as for example: the classic Ronan Point in 1968 [6] or the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in 2001 [7] in buildings, and the I-35 W bridge in Minnesota [8], the Hongqi Viaduct [9] or Ponte Morandi [10] in bridges. The concept of robustness is introduced in present-day design standards to minimise the risk of progressive collapse.…”