Robustness is a desirable property of structural systems which mitigates their susceptibility to progressive collapse. It is defined as the insensitivity of a structure to local failure. To examine a structure in terms of its robustness,... more
Robustness is a desirable property of structural systems which mitigates their susceptibility to progressive collapse. It is defined as the insensitivity of a structure to local failure. To examine a structure in terms of its robustness, a quantitative description by means of a measure would be useful. The measure could be used for evaluation, optimisation and regulation of robustness. To achieve these tasks, the measure must be expressive, objective, simple, calculable, and generally applicable. Some simple formulations of stiffness, damage, or energy-based measures of robustness developed by the authors are presented and discussed regarding the suggested requirements and possible applications. It is shown that the requirements cannot all be satisfied to the same level at the same time. Structures which tend towards different types of collapse may be favourably described by different measures of robustness.
