Professional Documents
Culture Documents
May 2013
Exercise:
Application of different robustness approaches
to a frame building structure
1. INTRODUCTION
The aim of this exercise is to investigate different ways of ensuring the robustness of a frame
building structure considering a vehicle impact on a column of the ground floor. The building
is located at a corner of two roadways and thus the perimeter columns adjacent to these roads
are likely to be impacted by a car or a lorry. Besides, the ground floor is a parking area
(accessible to cars only) so that any internal column could also be damaged.
The different approaches proposed in the Eurocodes will be applied and discussed. These
methods consist for example in increasing the column resistance in such a way they can resist
the impact or designing the structure so that it remains globally stable despite the loss of the
damaged column. However, in such a case, a static removal of the column will be assumed
(for sake of simplicity, no dynamic effect due to the failure of the column will be taken into
account in this exercise).
Exercise 2
ROBUSTNESS OF STRUCTURES
Exercise 3
ROBUSTNESS OF STRUCTURES
2.2. Material
All beams and columns of the structure are made of S235 steel. The material behaviour law is
assumed to be elastic-perfectly plastic with an infinite ductility.
2.3. Joints
The joints linking the primary beams to the columns have been designed using the software
CoP. They are sufficiently rigid to be considered as fully rigid in the analyses (non-sway
frame). An internal and an external joint are represented in Fig. 4; they are detailed in the
Annex. Their main characteristics are reported in Table 1 below. The joints linking the roof
primary beams to the top of the columns are assumed to have the same characteristics as the
other ones.
Table 1: Joint characteristics
Exercise 4
ROBUSTNESS OF STRUCTURES
Fig. 4: Joints
Self weight of the concrete slab and permanent loads: 6,25 / (based on an
2
estimation of the slab thickness of 25 cm, with a self-weight of 25 kN/m ). The slab is
assumed to be simply supported by the primary beams (span of 5 m).
The self-weight of the beam and column steel profiles (7850 !/ "
)
The combinations of actions to be considered for ultimate states are:
Exercise 5
ROBUSTNESS OF STRUCTURES
2) For the column stability checks under impact loading, the following simplifications
are considered:
% &' 0
%( 1,5 (if the collision force induce major axis bending !!)
) 0,8 (if the collision force induce major axis bending !!)
%* 1 (for the bending plane corresponding to the impact)
Exercise 6
ROBUSTNESS OF STRUCTURES
Explain what the distribution of tension forces in the beams of the directly affected
part of the frame (i.e. above the lost column) will be;
Based on this distribution, explain how the behaviour of the frame can be studied
using the sub-system;
Investigating the behaviour of the sub-system, determine whether a final stable state
can be reached in the global frame;
In case it is possible, is the final stable state reached in the elastic or plastic range? In
case it is not possible to reach a stable state, explain why (failure mode?).
If it is now considered that only the top of the first storey is horizontally restrained at both
extremities and that the upper storeys are only braced at one side (Fig. 7):
Exercise 7
ROBUSTNESS OF STRUCTURES
Answer the same questions as before (if possible: in elastic or plastic domain; if not:
why?).
Fig. 7: Perfectly braced secondary frame 2 (upper storeys braced at one extremity only)
Discuss the validity of the assumption that the frame is braced at both sides. What would
happen if it is only braced at one extremity?
Exercise 8
ROBUSTNESS OF STRUCTURES
5. CONCLUSION
Exercise 9
ROBUSTNESS OF STRUCTURES
1) Internal joint
2) External joint
Exercise 10
ROBUSTNESS OF STRUCTURES
Exercise 11