Guoqiang Li
Professor
Tongji University, Shanghai

Since the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers in US in 2001 due to terrorist attack, the topic on progressive collapse of building structures has attracted significant attentions from engineering and academic communities. Many research studies have been conducted on progressive collapse resistance of building structures under blast or impact loads, and several standards have been proposed for robustness assessment of structures. Fire is another abnormal action which may possibly induce progressive collapse of building structures and the final collapse of the WTC towers is deemed to be induced by the fire after the airplane impact instead of the initial damage caused by the airplane impact. However, research studies on progressive collapse resistance of steel building structures under fire effect are comparatively limited and the main current codified robustness assessments do not consider progressive collapse induced by fire loading. The research work of the authors during the last decade is presented, including performance of structural component under fire, performance and collapse modes of building structures under localized fire, and dynamic effects of structure performance in fire. These studies reveal the behavior of steel tall building structures in localized fire and are aimed to build a rational robustness assessment of steel building structures under localized fire scenarios.