U.S. General Services Administration Progressive Collapse Design Guidelines Applied to Concrete Moment-Resisting Frame Buildings

This paper discusses a study performed by the Portland Cement Association (PCA) to examine the application of the progressive collapse analysis and design guidelines included in the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) publication Progressive Collapse Analysis and Design Guidelines for New Federal Office Buildings and Major Modernization Projects to concrete frame buildings. Three reinforced cast in place concrete moment-resisting frame buildings, each 12 stories high and each with different seismic design categories (SDC), were analyzed and designed using the ETABS Nonlinear version 8.11 structural analyses and design software. The flexural and shear reinforcement for each building was calculated according to the strength requirements of the 2000 International Building Code (2000 IBC). The seismic use group, site class definition, and spectral response accelerations were selected to represent seismic design categories A, C, and D for each building used in the study.