Progressive collapse analysis methods due to blast loading in steel moment frames

One of the methods for assessing the potential of progressive collapse occurrence is the APM method. This method done by direct removing of one or several columns. However, in this method the damage of adjacent elements of removed columns under blast conditions was ignored and this issue can lead to an incorrect prediction of progressive collapse. Therefore in this study to evaluate the potential of progressive collapse due to blast loading a 4st steel moment frame building with Abaqus/CAE 6.11 software is simulated, and two methods '' alternative load path and applied of blast load directly'' were evaluated in this study. The results indicate that in assessment of the potential of progressive collapse occurrence by considering the blast loading as the initial reason of failure, the structure response will be different compared with the common methods that used for evaluation of progressive collapse occurrence and in those methods the initial reason of progressive collapse was ignored.