External mitigating technique for progressive collapse of framed structures

This paper discusses the enhancement of an external mitigating scheme to maximize the resistance of reinforced concrete continuous beams to progressive collapse due to interior support failure. The mitigating scheme using external unbounded fiber reinforced plastic straight cables and a relevant numerical model were presented by the authors in a recent paper to predict the progressive collapse resistance of the mitigated beams. The study, reported in this paper, extends the previous work to efficiently enhance the resistance of mitigated beams by inspecting different mitigating scheme setups. Straight and deviated cable profiles are considered, different cable deviator locations are examined, and different cable deviations are accounted for to compare the corresponding mitigated beam resistance enhancements. The mitigating scheme setup that provides maximum increase in the beam resistance is considered to be an enhanced setup that efficiently maximizes the increase in the mitigated beam resistance and can economically prevent progressive collapse of beams due to interior column failure.