A superelement formulation for efficient structural analysis in progressive collapse

An integrated superelement concept is proposed to improve the computational efficiency when analyzing structural responses during progressive collapses of large-scale structures, such as multi-storey reinforced concrete buildings. While the proposed methodology is straightforward and can be implemented into an existing finite element program with little effort, it is able to significantly reduce the computational cost without the loss of any critical information of the structural responses. Compared with the models without superelement, significant saving in computational cost and satisfactory prediction accuracy can be obtained with the proposed approach.