Progressive collapse of high-rise buildings—Last line of defense
Nikolay Lalkovski (2021). "Progressive collapse of high-rise buildings— Last line of defense," Doctoral Thesis, Announcement, TUHH, Structural Analysis Institute, January 2021.
The doctoral thesis with the title “Progressive collapse of high-rise buildings—last line of defense” addresses a topic that has received little attention since the collapse of the WTC Twin Towers in 2001. To use the words of the recommendation concluding the FEMA Report 403 from 2002 on this collapse, the purpose of the doctoral thesis has been to “determine, given the great size and weight of the two towers, whether there are feasible design and construction features that would permit such buildings to arrest or limit a collapse, once it began.”
The thesis will be available by the end of May 2021, but the idea that gave rise to this thesis can already be found in this conference paper. It shows that the endeavor of arresting a pancake-type collapse once it began is not as hopeless as it may at first appear. This preliminary finding has given the motivation to delve deeper into the topic by critically examining key assumptions made in the paper and addressing the related questions. These questions and numerous others that have since emerged during the pursuit of this captivating topic are addressed at length in the upcoming doctoral thesis.