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Strategic links save buildings from total collapse
A design principle for buildings incorporates components that can control the propagation of failure by isolating parts of the structure as they fail — offering a way to prevent a partial collapse snowballing into complete destruction.
In June 2021, the pool deck of Champlain Towers South, a residential building in Florida, suddenly gave way, triggering the progressive collapse of a substantial portion of the whole structure in a matter of seconds (see go.nature.com/3tux2ks). Most buildings aren’t vulnerable to such extreme failure, but collapses still occur. Sometimes — albeit rarely — part of a building will be affected by severe weather, accidents, deterioration or even construction or design errors, and its failure instigates a domino effect that culminates in the collapse of the entire building, or a large section of it. But what if there were some way to prevent the dominoes from falling over? Writing in Nature, Makoond et al.1 report an addition to an engineer’s armoury that can make buildings safer and more resilient by controlling the progression of collapse.
General Services Administration. Progressive Collapse Analysis and Design Guidelines for New Federal Office Buildings and Major Modernization Projects (GSA, 2016).