ABSTRACT
The collapse of the following buildings: Ronan Point Building in 1968 in London, Alfred Murrah Building in 1995 in United States and the World Trade centre triggers research in progressive collapse [1]. These landmark events stimulated research in progressive collapse assessment particularly in the United States which resulted in the development of current design guidelines such as GSA 2003 and DOD 2005 [2,3]. Progressive collapse results to complex redistribution of stresses beyond the values assumed at the conventional design stage [4]. Different modelling techniques exist in literature for progressive collapse investigation [5,6]. However, each modelling technique depends on the column removal time. The time lapse at which a column is removed for assessment defines how ‘sudden’ the structure responds to the dynamic effects of the triggering event. This paper is aimed at evaluating the effect of time lapse of column removal on structural responses using GSA 2003 design guidelines and SAP 2000 finite element code [7].
