The Institute journal

Guidance, technical notes, member stories and news from fifty years of demolition engineering.

Structural collapse mechanics in high-rise demolition

Progressive collapse modelling has moved from the research literature into the working method statement. For the demolition engineer on a tall structure, understanding how load paths fail — and in what order — is now a core competence.

The Institute's September lecture set out three questions every high-rise plan must answer before a single floor is touched. This article summarises the argument and points members to the full paper in the library.

1. Where does the structure want to fall?

Every frame has a preferred failure geometry. Reading it correctly is the difference between a controlled sequence and an uncontrolled one. The lecture walked through two recent London cases where the modelled behaviour and the observed behaviour diverged — and why.

"You are not demolishing a building. You are managing the release of the energy stored in it."

That framing — energy management rather than destruction — runs through the Institute's whole approach to competence, and it is why CPD in this area is now weighted so heavily in the Fellowship criteria.

2. What is the exclusion geometry?

Exclusion zones are derived, not assumed. The paper provides the calculation basis the Institute now recommends, with worked examples for both mechanical and explosive methods.

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David Ashworth · Fellow (FIDE) · Member no. 10428

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