Events such as fire, explosion, and impacts can have very high consequences in terms of casualties, loss of properties, and costs related to downtime and repair of the structure.
Due to the low probability of occurrence, the so called semi-probabilistic approach applied to ordinary design actions such as wind and earthquakes is not followed, but compliance with a special accidental design situation is required by the Eurocodes for these actions. Furthermore, the verification of the overall stability of the structural system is demanded by most national and international standards as compliance with the general principle of ensuring a proportionate response of the structure to all type of critical actions.
Arsons in buildings, truck fires under viaducts, ship impacts with offshore wind turbines, and cascade events such as fire following earthquakes are some example of actions for which the usual design based on the prevention of failures on single elements cannot be followed, as it would lead to an uneconomical and cumbersome design of the elements. In these cases, a different safety strategy can be followed, aimed at localizing the damage and avoiding a disproportionate collapse of the structure.
Problems arise from the fact that, contrarily to the requirement of failure prevention, which can be pursued by means of well-established resistance and deformability verifications carried out on single elements (e.g., at a fiber, section, or element level), the assessment and mitigation of the progressive collapse susceptibility of a structural system to a local failure is more challenging, as it involves the modeling of a highly nonlinear and often dynamic response of the whole structural system.
The study of structural characteristics that play a role in the vulnerability of a structure to extreme actions and in the progressive susceptibility of the system to local failure is therefore of interest, in order to define a methodology that can serve to the development of reliable design procedure to be integrated in building codes and design guidelines.
Publication
Samsonov A., Zania V., Giuliani L. (2014):
Soil structure interaction in offshore wind turbine collisions
Proc. of the 9th Int. Conf. on Structural Dynamics (EURODYN 2014), 30 June - 2 July 2014, Porto, Portugal
Giuliani L. (2012):
Structural safety in case of extreme actions
International Journal of Lifecycle Performance Engineering (ISSN: 2043-8648), vol: 1, issue: 1, pages: 12-40, 2012
Giuliani L., Crosti C., Gentili F. (2012):
Vulnerability of bridges to fire
6th International Conference on Bridge Maintenance, Safety and Management, (IABMAS 2012), Stresa, Italy, 2012
Contact
Luisa Giuliani