Progressive collapse is a failure mode of great concern for tall buildings, and it is also typical for building demolition. Engineers are nowadays more and more interested in estimating structures integrity and finding adequate collapse theories, in order to develop strategies for increasing or decreasing the progressive failure. A new method has been developed, for the last years, called the Applied Element Method, which has a large applicability for failure modelling. This paper has two main goals: (i) a short presentation of the Applied Element Method, and (ii) the presentation of a case study presenting the demolition of a structure and its mathematical modeling.
M. Lupoae, C. Bucur, Building Demolition: Positive Aspect of Progressive Collapse, MTA Review, Vol XIX, No. 4, December 2009.