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Preliminary Stage OpenSEES Simulation of the Collapse of Plasco Tower in Fire
The Plasco tower, built in 1962, was the tallest building with 17 storeys in Iran at the time of its construction and was considered as an iconic high-rise dominating the Tehran skyline. In January 2017, a fire started on the 10th floor which eventually led to its collapse and caused many deaths and injuries. The building was used as a residential and commercial building, with a major shopping centre on its ground floor, a restaurant on its upper floor, and several clothing workshops. It was a steel structure with built-up sections fabricated using standard European channels and angles without any fire protection. The tower had four strong core columns to transfer the load from primary beams to the foundation and relatively closely spaced interconnected columns along the periphery. This exterior framing is designed to be sufficiently strong to resist all lateral loads on the tower, thereby allowing the interior of the tower to be simply framed for gravity loads. For modelling, OpenSEES fibre-based sections and displacement-based beam-column elements are used. The thermal properties and elevated temperature mechanical properties are as recommended in the Eurocodes. As documented, the fire started at the 10th floor and then involved stories 11–14 as a result of a horizontally and vertically spreading fire. The thermo-mechanical analyses are performed assuming no variation of temperature across the thin sections. Based on the best available information, the floor in plan is believed to be structurally divided into nine individual blocks by two centrally running primary truss beams in both directions. This leads to an understanding that each block is structurally isolated except at the peripheral beams and central core columns, however, if the reinforced concrete floor slab is composite with steel beams of the floor system, this will not be the case. This paper presents the structural response of the tower over a single floor as a preliminary analysis.
Preliminary Stage OpenSEES Simulation of the Collapse of Plasco Tower in Fire
The Plasco tower, built in 1962, was the tallest building with 17 storeys in Iran at the time of its construction and was considered as an iconic high-rise dominating the Tehran skyline. In January 2017, a fire started on the 10th floor which eventually led to its collapse and caused many deaths and injuries. The building was used as a residential and commercial building, with a major shopping centre on its ground floor, a restaurant on its upper floor, and several clothing workshops. It was a steel structure with built-up sections fabricated using standard European channels and angles without any fire protection. The tower had four strong core columns to transfer the load from primary beams to the foundation and relatively closely spaced interconnected columns along the periphery. This exterior framing is designed to be sufficiently strong to resist all lateral loads on the tower, thereby allowing the interior of the tower to be simply framed for gravity loads. For modelling, OpenSEES fibre-based sections and displacement-based beam-column elements are used. The thermal properties and elevated temperature mechanical properties are as recommended in the Eurocodes. As documented, the fire started at the 10th floor and then involved stories 11–14 as a result of a horizontally and vertically spreading fire. The thermo-mechanical analyses are performed assuming no variation of temperature across the thin sections. Based on the best available information, the floor in plan is believed to be structurally divided into nine individual blocks by two centrally running primary truss beams in both directions. This leads to an understanding that each block is structurally isolated except at the peripheral beams and central core columns, however, if the reinforced concrete floor slab is composite with steel beams of the floor system, this will not be the case. This paper presents the structural response of the tower over a single floor as a preliminary analysis.
Preliminary Stage OpenSEES Simulation of the Collapse of Plasco Tower in Fire
Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering
Madhavan, Mahendrakumar (editor) / Davidson, James S. (editor) / Shanmugam, N. Elumalai (editor) / Domada, Ramakanth (author) / Yarlagadda, Tejeswar (author) / Jiang, Liming (author) / Usmani, Asif (author)
Indian Structural Steel Conference ; 2020 ; Hyderabad, India
Proceedings of the Indian Structural Steel Conference 2020 (Vol. 1) ; Chapter: 11 ; 143-155
2023-08-17
13 pages
Article/Chapter (Book)
Electronic Resource
English
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