New technology allow earlier detection of sturctural vulnerabilities

Have you read Matthys Levy’s and Mario Salvadori’s Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail(1994) (perhaps you shouldn’t: We know of friends who moved out and slept in a hammock in the yard for a few nights after reading it). In any event, Raleigh, North-Carolina-based Applied Science International says it has a new technology which would prevent buildings from falling. The company’s engineers have analyzed the behavior of structures exposed to terrorist explosions and unplanned or natural disasters, and say they have developed the technology to cope with such disasters.

Imagine a truck loaded with the equivalent of 4,000 pounds of explosives parking at the curb near the center of a 9-story building. Within five seconds of detonation the building is in ruins, having totally collapsed. The explosion takes out a supporting column causing the failure of a main girder and the progressive collapse of the building above. At the end of the day there are 168 confirmed dead and 853 people injured. This was the case in Oklahoma City a dozen years ago. Until now, structural engineers have been limited to an approach called the Finite Element Method, or FEM, to design buildings. The weakness of FEM-based models is that they bend but do not break; they deform but do not separate. It is not an accurate picture of what happens in reality. The company’s engineers are now offering an alternative method which they term Applied Element Method, or AEM. They say that AEM has redefined how progressive collapse, seismic wave effect, high wind, glass, and blast are viewed and analyzed by engineers.

Knowing potential vulnerabilities of a design allows the making of more informed decisions on structural design and architectural layouts, determining building envelopes and perimeters, opting for alternate material selections, and even developing better security and safety procedures the company says.

Edward di Girolamo, ASI’s CEO, says that “For the first time, building owners, designers, architects, engineers, insurance underwriters, and security experts can see what will happen before an event takes place, whether it’s a bomb within a building’s perimeter, an earthquake underneath it, or a hurricane assaulting it from the side.” He continued: “It is the world’s only real-time progressive collapse analysis software, and it can be used on any structure at any phase — from pre-construction design of structures such as towers, sports arenas and bridges to buildings scheduled for remodeling or demolition — there is no limit to its application.”