How to check analytically the robustness of a building submitted to a column loss - A premiere

Recent events such as natural catastrophes or terrorism attacks have highlighted the necessity to
ensure the structural integrity of buildings under an exceptional event. According to Eurocodes and some other national design codes, the structural integrity of civil engineering structures should be guaranteed through appropriate measures and one way to guarantee it is to ensure an appropriate robustness of the structure, which may be defined as the ability of a structure to remain globally stable in case of exceptional event leading to local damages. However, although global design approaches are provided in modern codes and standards, no easy-to-apply practical guidelines are provided. The present paper reflects recent researches realised at the University of Liege with the scope of proposing such practical guidelines for the activation of alternative load path in the structure, design strategy generally leading to the most economical solutions.