A preliminary analysis and discussion of the condominium building collapse in surfside, Florida, US, June 24, 2021

Abstract

On June 24, 2021, a 40-year-old reinforced concrete flat plate structure building in Miami suffered a sudden partial collapse. This study analyzed the overall performance and key components of the collapsed building based on the building design codes (ACI-318 and GB 50010). Punching shear and post-punching performances of typical slab-column joints are also studied through the refined finite element analysis. The collapse process was simulated and visualized using a physics engine. By way of these analyses, weak design points of the collapsed building are highlighted. The differences between the reinforcement detailing of the collapsed building and the requirements of the current Chinese code are discussed, together with a comparison of the punching shear and post-punching performances. The simulated collapse procedure and debris distribution are compared with the actual collapse scenes.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

progressive collapse / flat plate / simulation / punching

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for the financial support received from The National Key R&D Program (No. 2019YFE0112800), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51778341), and the Australian Research Council through an ARC Discovery Project (No. DP150100606).

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