Engineering Structures 55 (2013) 107115

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Engineering Structures
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/engstruct

Membrane actions of RC slabs in mitigating progressive collapse

of building structures
Pham Xuan Dat , Tan Kang Hai
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798, Singapore

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Available online 15 December 2011
Keywords:
Progressive collapse
Reinforced concrete building structures
Penultimate column loss
Membrane actions
Reinforced concrete slabs
Large deformations
Finite element analysis

a b s t r a c t
Potential for progressive collapse of RC buildings can be studied using sudden column loss scenarios. The
loss of either a penultimate-internal (PI) column or a penultimate-external (PE) column is among the
most critical scenarios since it leaves the associated beam-and-slab substructures laterally unrestrained.
At large deformations, the membrane behaviour of the affected slabs, consisting of a peripheral compressive ring of concrete supporting tensile membrane action in the central region, represents an important
line of defence against progressive collapse. In this paper, an advanced nite element model (FEM), which
has been validated by available test data, is used to investigate the membrane behaviour in laterally unrestrained slabs associated with PI column loss in the presence of interior double-span beams, rotational
restraints along the perimeter edges, and the slab top reinforcement. It has been shown that in the central
region, greater tensile membrane forces are mobilised due to the participation of beam reinforcement
and slab top reinforcement. In the outer region, the compressive ring of concrete is also strengthened
by slab hogging moment. Hence, the overall load-carrying capacity of the affected structures can be
enhanced signicantly to sustain the gravity applied loads which are severely amplied by both double-span effect and dynamic effect.
2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
When a ground column is suddenly removed by an explosion,
axial compressive forces in columns above the removed column
will be redistributed quickly within a few milliseconds. As a result,
all oors above the rst oor will deect identically and dynamically under uniform gravity loads to seek a new equilibrium path.
There are two simultaneous changes which may increase the internal forces in the affected oor structures:
Double-span effect: Spans of slabs and beams bridging over the
removed column will double the initial ones.
Dynamic effect: Existing gravity loads are amplied by a
dynamic factor is up to 2.0.
The beam-to-column connections just above the removed column, which are initially designed for hogging moments, now have
to carry huge sagging moments. At the remote connections, the
hogging moments, as a quadratic function of the double span
length, may increase at least four times the initial values. If the affected beam-slab structures are not able to resist the increased
bending moment, an alternative load path is needed to prevent
progressive collapse.
Corresponding author. Tel.: +65 8272 0244.
E-mail address: pham0046@e.ntu.edu.sg (P.X. Dat).
0141-0296/$ - see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.engstruct.2011.08.039

Recently, great efforts have been made by the research community to study the behaviour of building structures under the loss of
a column. Most attention has been devoted to the behaviour of
beams bridging over removed columns under amplied gravity
loads. It was concluded by Sasani and Kropelnicki [1] and Yi
et al. [2] that a large reserve capacity of catenary action in beams,
which carries gravity applied loads by the tension mode, is crucial
to mitigate progressive collapse.
Nevertheless, it should be noted that catenary action is effective
in preventing progressive collapse, if and only if lateral restraint
from adjacent boundary elements is adequate. When a mid-span
column is removed, adjacent slabs may form a very strong in-plane
diaphragm which is able to support the catenary tension forces
(Fig. 1). However, when either a penultimate-external or a penultimate-internal column is removed, the catenary tension forces
may pull inwards the perimeter columns, leading to a progressive
collapse. In such a situation, catenary action may cause (rather
than prevent) progressive collapse to occur (Fig. 2).
Unlike catenary action in beams, membrane actions in slabs do
not require any lateral restraint from adjacent boundary elements.
Under a penultimate column loss scenario, the affected slabs,
which become laterally unrestrained with two consecutive edges
discontinuous, are capable of forming a peripheral compressive
ring to support the tensile membrane forces in the central deected area. It is envisaged that the peripheral compressive ring
will reduce the demand of catenary action on the perimeter

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P.X. Dat, T.K. Hai / Engineering Structures 55 (2013) 107115

amplified gravity loads

slab

slab

slab

slab

removed column

slab

amplified gravity loads

slab

PLAN VIEW

ELEVATION VIEW

CATENARY ACTION IN BEAMS

Fig. 1. Catenary action in beams under a loss of an external mid-span column.

slab

slab

slab

slab

slab

slab

slab

amplified gravity loads

slab

B
slab

slab
B

column B

PI COLUMN LOSS

PE COLUMN LOSS
ELEVATION VIEW

Fig. 2. Instability of perimeter columns B due to catenary tension forces.

Compression
across yield lines
Yield lines
Tension zone
Compression
zone
PI COLUMN LOSS

PE COLUMN LOSS

Fig. 3. Membrane actions in a simply supported slab and in a beam-slab structure. (a) In a simply supported slab. (b) Associated with PI and PE column loss.

columns and thus enable the structures to sustain the amplied

gravity applied loads longer before the onset of progressive collapse (Fig. 3).
Membrane actions in a laterally unrestrained slab can be explained by Fig. 3(a). After the formation of yield lines, the slab is
divided into four independent parts which are connected together by the yield lines. At large deformations, the independent
parts tend to move inwards under the action of increasing tensile forces at the centre of the slab, but are restrained from
doing so by adjacent parts, creating a peripheral ring of compression supporting the central net of tensile forces. The overall
load-carrying capacity of the slab therefore comprises tensile
membrane capacity in the centre of the slab and the enhanced
exural capacity in the outer ring where in-plane compressive
stresses occur.
The behaviour of the laterally unrestrained slab at large deformations has been extensively studied by Hayes [3], Sawcuzk [4],
Brotchie and Holley [5], and Mitchel and Cook [6]. It has been

shown that the load-carrying capacity of membrane actions is at

least twice the yield-line capacity. Recently, these mechanisms
have been successfully applied to prevent collapse of composite
oors subjected to compartment res in Europe through a simplied design method developed by Bailey [7].
Under a penultimate column loss scenario, a beamslab structure is similar to a simply supported slab in the sense that both
are laterally-unrestrained; two adjacent perimeter edges are free
to move horizontally. However, compared to a simply-supported
slab, a beam-slab structure requires additional factors to be
considered:
(1) Rotational restraint with slab top reinforcement is available
along the perimeter edges of the slab.
(2) A considerable amount of top reinforcement exists along the
interior double-span beams.
(3) Two interior double-span beams are placed at the symmetry
axes of the slab.

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P.X. Dat, T.K. Hai / Engineering Structures 55 (2013) 107115

Top bars

A
B

Bottom bars

free
to move

B-B

A-A

free
to move

Top bars

Interior beams

free
to move

C-C

free
to move

D-D

Fig. 4. Four general study cases. (a) Case 1 A simply supported slab. (b) Case 2 A rotationally restrained slab. (c) Case 3 A rotationally restrained slab with additional top
bars. (d) Case 4 A rotationally restrained beam-slab substructure.

In addition, under a column loss scenario the span-to-depth ratio of the slab increases up to 80 times, which doubles the maximum for a single panel.
In this paper, a quasi-static numerical analysis is conducted to
investigate the membrane behaviour of a beam-slab substructure
subjected to a penultimate-internal column loss. The analysis is
based on a simply supported slab model which is modied to
incorporate the aforementioned factors. The three factors are
sequentially and accumulatively added to the simply supported
slab model to estimate the contribution of each factor to the overall structural behaviour (Fig. 4). The boundary condition of the slab
is rotationally restrained but laterally unrestrained and the vertical
applied load is uniformly distributed. The non-linear nite element
software, DIANA, is used for this purpose.
2. Finite element analysis
2.1. Numerical case study
A series of reinforced concrete sub-assemblage specimens, referred to as PI series (penultimate-internal column loss), is designed to study tensile membrane action of beam-slab systems.
Dimensions of the test specimens are determined by scaling down
a prototype nine-storey building structure with a factor of 4 (Table 1). The prototype building is designed for gravity loading
according to BS-8110-97, with the design live load of 3 kN/m2

Table 1
Dimensions of structural elements.
Dimensions

The prototype building

The test specimens

Beam section (W  D)
Slab thickness
Span length

30 cm  50 cm
16 cm
600 cm

7.5 cm  12.5 cm
4 cm
150 cm

Table 2
Case studies for penultimate-internal column loss condition.

Case
Case
Case
Case

1
2
3
4

qtop = 0.86%
qbot = 0.43%

qtop = 1.14%
qbot = 0.57%

qtop = 1.42%
qbot = 0.71%

qtop = 1.72%
qbot = 0.86%

PI
PI
PI
PI

PI
PI
PI
PI

PI
PI
PI
PI

PI
PI
PI
PI

11
21
31
41

12
22
32
42

13
23
33
43

14
24
34
44

and the imposed dead load of 2 kN/m2. Exterior beams are designed with an additional wall load of 1 kN/m.
The main variables of interest in this series are the slab top and
bottom reinforcement ratios. There are four cases will be investigated with four different reinforcement ratios shown in Table 2.
For each case, the top reinforcement ratio (qtop) is twice the bottom
one (qbot.). Dimensions of other structural elements, such as beams,
slabs and columns, are kept the same in all the cases. The boundary
condition and the reinforcement conguration of the nite element models are illustrated in Fig. 4.
3. Finite element modelling
Fig. 5(a) shows the European CEB-FPI concrete Model Code
adopted in this study. The peak compressive strength is dened
as the value of the characteristic cylinder-compressive strength
fck and the initial linear elastic stage of the concrete model is up
to 30% of the compressive strength. The constitutive model of concrete under biaxial state of stress is modelled by the DruckerPrager failure surface, as shown in Fig. 5(b). Multi-directional xed
smeared crack model, which is specied by a combination of tension cut-off, tension softening and shear retention, is adopted for
concrete in tension. The shear stiffness of concrete after cracking
is dened with a constant value of 0.2. The detailed material properties used in the analysis are shown in Table 3.

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P.X. Dat, T.K. Hai / Engineering Structures 55 (2013) 107115

Fig. 5. Concrete material model [9]. (a) Uniaxial relationship of concrete material. (b) Biaxial strength of concrete.

Table 3
Material properties in numerical analyses.
Concrete

Steel reinforcement

Young modulus Ec
fck
ft
Fracture energy Gf

2.00 104 MPa

33 MPa
3.1 MPa
0.07 MPa

Young modulus Es
fy
fu

2.1 105 MPa

210 MPa
250 MPa

The steel reinforcement is modelled by an elasto-plastic biliniear model. The Von Mises plastic criterion is applied together with
the work hardening hypothesis.
The eight-node quadrilateral isoparametric curved layered shell
elements (CQ40L) (Fig. 6a) are used to model reinforced concrete
beams and slabs. CQ40L is based on the following assumptions:
(1) Plane sections remain plane but their normal vectors are not
necessarily normal to the reference surface. Shear deformation is included in MindlinReissner theory.
(2) The shell elements are multi-layered with the normal stress
between two adjacent layers reduced to zero. In each layer,
the shear strains are constrained by a shear correction factor.
Each element node has ve degrees of freedom, viz. three translations and two rotations. Reinforcement in beams and slabs is
modelled by planar grid reinforcement embedded in the shell elements, so-called mother elements. Reinforcement strains are computed from the strains of the mother elements with perfect
bonding between reinforcement and surrounding concrete. The
thickness of the grid reinforcement is equivalent to the reinforcement area per unit length of structural elements (beams and slabs).
In this analysis, the incremental-iterative solution procedure
consisting of two parts: the incremental part and the iteration part,

is employed to solve the non-linear problem. In the increment part,

the displacement eld of a nonlinear problem should be divided
into many increments using arc-length method. In the iteration
part, the equilibrium stage at the end of every increment can be
achieved by the regular NewtonRaphson method. The geometrical nonlinearity is taken into account by Total Lagrangian method,
which is suitable for solving large-deformation but small-strain
problems. The nite element model is validated through the test
M1 conducted by Bailey et al [8]. The slabs are uniformly loaded
all round with simply supported boundary condition. A reasonably
good correlation between the numerical analysis and test results is
obtained as shown in Fig. 6(b).
Due to the double-symmetry in boundary and loading conditions, only a quarter of the RC beam-slab substructures is modelled
and analysed by using a 8  8 mesh. Along the symmetrical axes,
the boundary nodes are free to move vertically. Along the perimeter edges, vertical displacements of the element nodes are set to
zero in all cases. The horizontal reactions along the symmetrical
axes represent the distribution of tension and compression forces
in the central region and the peripheral compressive ring, respectively. It is emphasised that the total horizontal reactions along
each symmetrical axe should be zero due to force equilibrium,
and the total vertical reactions along the perimeter edges must
be equal to the applied loads.

4. Discussion on numerical results

Sixteen cases are analysed by DIANA in order to investigate the
effects of the additional factors on the membrane behaviour of RC
slabs. The nite element analysis proceeds very well into the membrane stage until termination occurs at the vertical central deformations at about 35 times the effective depth of slabs. The
recorded points of interest are the horizontal reactions along the

2.7
2.4
2.1
1.8
1.5
1.2
0.9
0.6
0.3
0
0

Fig. 6. Element type and validation of FE model. (a) The curved layered shell element CQ40L [9]. (b) Validation of FE model with M1-test [8].

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P.X. Dat, T.K. Hai / Engineering Structures 55 (2013) 107115

symmetrical axes, the reaction forces along the perimeter edges,

strain and stress of both concrete and reinforcement, and vertical
displacements of element nodes. These points provide valuable insight into the membrane behaviour of concrete slabs at large deformations. Some interesting numerical observations are discussed as
follows.

Table 4
Tensile membrane forces in detail.

Total membrane force (N)

Tension force by reinforcement (N)
Tension force carried by concrete (N)
Percentage of tension force carried
by concrete (%)

PI 11

PI 12

PI 13

63480
45600
17880
28%

68750
60800
7950
11.5%

103530
76000
27530
26.6%

4.1. Development of membrane actions in a simply supported slab

Reinforcement conguration and boundary conditions of the
original model, a simply supported slab, is shown in Fig. 7. The
in-plane membrane actions, comprising a peripheral compressive
ring of concrete and tensile membrane action in the central region,
begins to develop at a central displacement of 35 mm, which is
about one effective depth of the slab. As the vertical displacement
increases, the central tensile region expands quickly, resulting in
greater in-plane membrane forces. At very large displacements,
the area of central region and the magnitudes of membrane forces
do not change signicantly until the analysis terminates due to
convergence difculty. Fig. 8 shows the development of membrane
actions in Slab PI 11. At a displacement of 130 mm, the width of the
peripheral compressive ring is about 150 mm, and the magnitude
of membrane force is about 60.0 kN. It is noted that the sum of
the tension forces in the central region should be equal to that of
the compressive forces in the peripheral ring at any displacement.
From Table 4, it can be observed that in the central region the
concrete may carry a signicant portion of tension forces, which
varies from 11.5% in Slab PI 12 to 28% in Slab PI 11.

4.2. Membrane actions in a rotationally restrained slab (Case 2)

As the tensile membrane action in the central region increases,
the compressive membrane action in the perimeter edges should
also increase to maintain the equilibrium between the tension
zone and the compression zone. Hence, sufcient strength of the
outer compressive ring is a necessary condition to prevent the progressive collapse of beam-slab structures subjected to a penultimate column loss. Failure of the ring may cause structural
collapse as shown in Fig. 2.
With rotational restraint and top reinforcement along the
perimeter edges of a laterally-unrestrained slab (Fig. 9), it is obvious that hogging moment will exist. From the analysis, it is discovered that this moment can fortify the outer compressive ring by
enlarging the width of the ring and redistributing the compressive
stress throughout the depth of the slab in this region.
A larger compressive ring indicates that the size of tensile
central region is reduced (Fig. 9b). This leads to less tensile

Wcr

Tension forces

Center
lines

Bottom bars
Z=0

Tension
area

Wcr

free
to move

Tension
forces

Ry=0; X=0

Rx=0; Y=0
A

Z=0

A-A
Fig. 7. Case 1 A simply supported slab. (a) Slab conguration. (b) Boundary conditions and in-plane force distributions in a quarter of the slab.

Fig. 8. Development of membrane actions in Slab PI 11. (a) The membrane forces. (b) Width of the compressive ring (Wcr).

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P.X. Dat, T.K. Hai / Engineering Structures 55 (2013) 107115

membrane force to be mobilised. As shown in Fig. 10(a), the total

membrane forces in Slab PI 22 (with rotational restraint) are only
about 70% of that in Slab PI 12 (without rotational restraint).
The redistribution of the compressive stress due to the hogging
moment along the perimeter edges is even more remarkable. In the
cross-section of the outer ring at the centre line position, the compressive stress can be calculated as follows:

rcomp

F
T  W cr

where rcomp is the average compressive stress through slab crosssection; F is total membrane force; T is the thickness of slab and
Wcr is the width of compressive ring.
Fig. 10(b) shows a signicant reduction of the average compressive stress in Slab PI 22 compared with Slab PI 12.

4.3. Membrane actions in a rotationally restrained slabs with

additional top bars along the centre lines (Case 3)
In Case 3, additional membrane forces are expected due to additional slab top bars added along the symmetrical axes, (Fig. 11).
However, the analysis shows that their contribution to the overall
load-carrying capacity of the slabs is not signicant. This is due to a
low tension stress level in the reinforcement (Fig. 11b) with maximum value of only 70 N/mm2 at a central displacement of
110 mm, about 30% of yield strength of reinforcement.
4.4. Membrane actions in a rotationally restrained beam-slab system
(Case 4)
A complete beam-slab structure (Fig. 12) is obtained by adding
interior beams to a rotationally restrained slab (Case 2). When the

Wcr

Tension
area

Wcr

free
to move

B-B

Ry=0; X=0

Ry=0; Z=0

Rx=0; Y=0

Top bars

Rx=0; Z=0

Fig. 9. Case 2 A rotationally restrained slab. (a) Slab conguration. (b) Boundary conditions and in-plane force distributions in a quarter of the slab.

Fig. 10. Comparison of membrane forces between slabs PI 12 and PI 22. (a) Membrane forces versus central displacement. (b) Average compressive stress in the outer ring rcomp.

Top bars

free
to move

C-C
Fig. 11. Case 3 A rotationally restrained slab with additional top bars. (a) Additional top bars along its edges and symmetrical axes. (b) Stress in the top bars along the
symmetrical axes.

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P.X. Dat, T.K. Hai / Engineering Structures 55 (2013) 107115

central displacement become large, the total membrane forces

including catenary forces produced by beam reinforcement are
much higher than that in Case 2 (Fig. 13a). It is of signicance to
notice that although the average compressive stress (rcomp) in
the compressive ring increases signicantly due to catenary forces,
it is still lower than that in Case 1 with the simply supported
boundary condition (Fig. 13b). This shows the capability of slab
hogging moment in strengthening the compressive ring.
As long as the nite element analyses do not terminate, it is observed that hogging moments of beams and slabs along the perimeter edges remain stable (Fig. 14). It is possible that large
displacements do not affect the contribution of hogging moments
to the overall load-carrying capacity.
The termination of analysis, which occurs at a displacement of
about 5% of the double-span length, is mainly due to excessive

compressive concrete strains at both beam ends due to hogging

moment larger than the predened value (Table 5).
4.5. Enhancement of the overall load-carrying capacity
The load-displacement predictions in 16 cases can be shown in
Fig. 15. The load-carrying capacity of the beam-slab structures can

Table 5
Maximum compressive strain in the concrete .

eultimate
emax (Predened)

PI 41

PI 42

PI 43

0.019
0.02

0.02
0.02

0.196
0.02

Catenary
forces

D-D

Tension
area

Wcr

Interior beams

Ry=0; X=0

Ry=0; Z=0

Rx=0; Y=0
D

free
to move
X

Rx=0; Z=0

Fig. 12. Case 4 A rotationally restrained beam-slab structure. (a) Beam-slab conguration. (b) Boundary conditions and in-plane force distributions in a quarter of the slab.

Fig. 13. Comparison of membrane forces between slabs PI 12, PI 22 and PI 42. (a) Membrane forces versus central displacement. (b) Average compressive stress rcomp.

Fig. 14. Moment reactions of beams and slabs along the perimeter edges.

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P.X. Dat, T.K. Hai / Engineering Structures 55 (2013) 107115

Fig. 15. Load-displacement predictions of slabs with additional factors. (a) Slab bottom reinforcement ratio q = 0.43%. (b) Slab bottom reinforcement ratio q = 0.57%. (c) Slab
bottom reinforcement ratio q = 0.71%. (d) Slab bottom reinforcement ratio q = 0.86%.

Table 6
A comparison between yield-line loads (Wyield-line) and predicted loads (Wpredicted).

Mslab, hog (Nm/m)

Mslab, sag. (Nm/m)
Mbeam (Nm)
Wyield-line (N/m2)
Wpredicted (N/m2)
Wpredicted/Wyield-line

Fig. 16. Partial contributions to the overall load-carrying capacity.

be greatly enhanced by additional factors such as rotational restraint, interior double-span beams and the top reinforcement of
slabs. The contributions of these factors are to be quantied with
the highest contribution from interior beams, rotational restraint
and the slab top reinforcement along the interior beams.
At small displacements, the overall load-carrying capacity of a
beam-slab structure is contributed by hogging moment and sagging moment of beams and slabs. At large displacements, since
hogging moments do not change very much (Fig. 14), it is reasonable to assume that their contributions to the overall capacity remain stable. Meanwhile, contributions of membrane actions and
catenary action, which replace the sagging moment the central region, tend to be proportional to the vertical displacement. Therefore, it would be possible to summarise the load-displacement
relationships by Fig. 16.
As illustrated in Fig. 16, the constant discrepancy between Case
1 (a simply supported slab) and Case 2 (a rotationally restrained
slab) is referred to as the contribution of slab hogging moment.

PI 41

PI 42

PI 43

PI 44

2127
1063
1139
9145
19494
2.13

2826
1413
1139
11603
22197
1.91

3545
1772
1139
14130
24540
1.73

4254
2127
1139
16623
28245
1.70

The discrepancy between Case 2 and Case 4 (a complete beam-slab

structure) is due to the contributions of hogging moment along the
perimeter edges and catenary actions in the central region.
The loads applied onto the complete beam-slab structures (Case
4), predicted at a displacement of about four times the slab effective depth, are much higher than the ultimate exural loads which
are calculated by the yield-line analysis (Table 6). It is shown the
signicant contributions of membrane and catenary actions at
large displacements.
5. Conclusions
Although membrane actions in laterally unrestrained slabs have
been investigated for years, most research studies focused on composite slabs under res. So far, very limited analytical and experimental works on these mechanisms of the two-way slabs under
column loss condition have been published, if at all. In this paper,
by using numerical investigations, membrane actions have been
shown to be a feasible solution for preventing progressive collapse
of building structures under column loss scenarios.
After a penultimate column is suddenly removed, if exural
mechanism of the affected structure is unable to resist the amplied gravity load, membrane actions will take place in the central

P.X. Dat, T.K. Hai / Engineering Structures 55 (2013) 107115

115

Fig. 17. A typical setup for beam-slab systems under the PI column loss scenario.

region. In such a situation, the survival of the structure may depend on the strength of the peripheral compressive ring forming
in the slabs of the affected structure. It is due to the fact that at
large deformations the compressive ring should carry not only tensile membrane forces from the slab itself but also catenary forces
from the interior double-span beams. It has been numerically
shown that the hogging moments along the perimeter edges can
greatly strengthen the compressive ring by enlarging the width
of the ring as well as redistributing the compressive stress
throughout the depth of the slab in this region. Even when the central displacement increases up to 5% of the double span length,
there is no sign of failure of the compressive ring.
The load-carrying capacity of beam-slab substructures has been
shown to be signicantly enhanced by membrane actions in slabs
and catenary action in the double-span beams when displacement
becomes large. At a displacement of 5% of the double span length,
the capacity of beam-slab structures is as high as twice the original
exural capacity. The enhanced capacity is a key feature to sustain
the amplied gravity loads and thus to mitigate the progressive
collapse of building structures.
Although the nite element analysis proceeds very well into the
membrane stage in all cases, some limitations do still exist. Firstly,
due to the early termination which occurs in all cases, it is not possible to obtain the nal failure modes of the beam-slab substructures. Secondly, effects of some accompanying structural
phenomena such as concrete crushing at the bottom face of the
double-span beam-column connections, torsional failure of perimeter beams subjected to slab hogging moments, and fractures of
bottom bars of the double-span beams at large deformations cannot be taken into account. These limitations address the need for
experimental work. Currently, a series of tests conducted on 1=4
scaled models of beam-and-slab substructures subjected to large
deformations is being prepared in Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. The typical setup is shown in Fig. 17. The rotation-

ally restrained but laterally unrestrained boundary condition of

specimens is simulated by eight pin-ended steel columns. A uniformly distributed load is simulated by a loading tree, which can
equally redistribute the load from an actuator to twelve loading
points.
Acknowledgements
The work presented in this paper is supported by the research
funding from Defence Science & Technology Agency (DSTA) titled
as: Effects of catenary and membrane actions on the collapse mechanisms of RC buildings. The nancial support of DSTA is gratefully
acknowledged. Sincere thanks are given to Dr Toh Wee Siang for
his technical assistance in nite element modelling.
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