A Review on Progressive Collapse of Reinforced Concrete Flat Slab Structures

The reinforced concrete flat slab structures are highly susceptible to punching shear failure. This occurs due to the transferring of shear force and due to the bending moment between the slab and the column. The initial local failure and the following redistribution of load can lead to punching failure of the slab in the adjacent column locations. This issue can collapse an entire building or a huge portion of a structure. Hence, an alternate load path method is necessary for preventing the catastrophic failure of the buildings. Compared to the moment frame buildings, flat slab buildings are more prone to the progressive collapse. Thus, the designing of flat plate structures demands more attention and study. Due to higher construction costs and limitations in the test set up, the researchers have adopted scale down structures for the experimental studies. The progressive collapse behavior of the prototype structures is usually analyzed using both analytical and numerical simulations. This paper discusses the existing researchers on the analytical study, experimental study, and numerical simulations of flat slab structures along with various load resisting mechanisms to mitigate progressive collapse. Further, various strengthening techniques available in the literature for the flat slab structures have been discussed. A parametric study and comparison of different strengthening techniques are also performed in this work.