Research Brief: Molecular Dynamics-based Resilience Assessment of Structures

Abstract

According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), losses due to fire in structures in America amount to around $13 billion annually. Despite these severe economic consequences, building codes often don’t adequately predict the failure of an entire structure. Instead, they tend to model fire damage in individual elements without considering the greater building ensemble (all the elements together with their connections). Therefore, CSHub has developed a model that quantifies the complexity of fire at the element-scale (such as the spalling of concrete elements) as well as at the system-scale (accounting for any building use, geometry, etc.).