Controlled demolition: novel monitoring and experimental validation of blast-induced full-scale existing high-rise building implosion using numerical finite element simulations

Abstract

This paper presents a study of a 63-m-high (206 feet) RC building’s failure under blast loading and subsequent column removals. The analysis covers the entire process, starting with explosive charge detonation and ending in demolition. LS-DYNA software was used for blast wave propagation and structural interaction, while SAP2000 modeled successive column removal, both focused on columns experiencing the highest loads at the bottom, using nonlinear dynamic analysis (NDA). Three explicit methods—Load blast enhanced (LBE), Arbitrary lagrangian eulerian (ALE), and Coupling—were discussed for their suitability. The LBE method, though time-efficient, faces challenges in limiting affected surface or volume. ALE confines explosive energy to designated columns and the Coupling method emerges as the most appropriate, combining ALE for initial detonation and LBE for subsequent implosion. The research distinguishes itself by exploring a novel method for safely monitoring building demolition. By employing stationary cameras positioned outside the critical collapse area and utilizing Tracker software, it segments footage into frames, tracks point displacement in each frame, and compares the results with real values, providing a comprehensive analysis. Moreover, the study’s examination aligns with the actual demolition, offering insights by comparing simulation results with photographs of real damage, thereby validating the procedure. The findings show explicit analysis aligns closely with real data, while SAP2000 NDA exhibits relatively distant results, although being more time-efficient. The article also explores alternative demolition scenarios, sequentially removing three column groups from the same structure. To deepen the analysis, scenarios were created by varying the time intervals between column removals. Decreasing time intervals resulted in improved alignment between the outcomes of both programs. The global issue of buildings reaching the end of their service life and the 2023 seismic events in Turkiye have highlighted the urgent need to analyze numerical methods for the demolition of hundreds of thousands of structures with specific focus.