TY - GEN
T1 - Preliminary Stage OpenSEES Simulation of the Collapse of Plasco Tower in Fire
AU - Domada, Ramakanth
AU - Yarlagadda, Tejeswar
AU - Jiang, Liming
AU - Usmani, Asif
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024, Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
PY - 2023/8
Y1 - 2023/8
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Fire-induced collapse
KW - OpenSEES for fire
KW - Plasco tower
KW - Steel building
KW - Thermo-mechanical analysis
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85172022897&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/978-981-19-9390-9_11
DO - 10.1007/978-981-19-9390-9_11
M3 - Conference article published in proceeding or book
AN - SCOPUS:85172022897
SN - 9789811993893
T3 - Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering
SP - 143
EP - 155
BT - Proceedings of the Indian Structural Steel Conference 2020 (Vol. 1) - ISSC 2020
A2 - Madhavan, Mahendrakumar
A2 - Davidson, James S.
A2 - Shanmugam, N. Elumalai
A2 - Shanmugam, N. Elumalai
PB - Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
T2 - Proceedings of the Indian Structural Steel Conference 2020 (Vol. 1) - ISSC 2020
Y2 - 25 March 2020 through 27 March 2020
ER -