Progressive collapse of precast panel buildings subjected to external loading

This paper presents a method for the stability assessment of large-panel buildings with external and cross interior load bearing walls and for the examination whether a possible failure of such a building is expected to progress from an initial local failure to a global failure of a considerable part of the building. The method extends an approach that was originally developed by Y. M. Strugatzky (1936-2000). The original method is relatively unknown, it was hardly published and its existing resources are almost inaccessible [1,2]. Therefore, for completeness it is concisely presented (with some unavoidable changes in the original method that focused on exterior reinforced concrete walls only) and extended to include cases of initial local failure in the interior part of the structure, as well as to refer to buildings with transverse or longitudinal interior load bearing walls.