- Author
- Leyendecker, E. V. | Fattal, S. G.
- Title
- Investigation of the Skyline Plaza Collapse in Fairfax County, Virginia. Final Report.
- Coporate
- National Bureau of Standards, Washington, DC
- Sponsor
- Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Washington, DC
- Report
- NBS BSS 094, February 1977,
- Distribution
- Available from National Technical Information Service
- Keywords
- apartment buildings; collapse; concrete slabs; structural analysis; formwork (construction); shear properties; columns (supports); Virginia | concrete slabs
- Identifiers
- Fairfax County (Virginia); Skyline Plaza; progressive collapse
- Abstract
- The collapse of the Skyline Plaza apartment building A-4 has been studied by using information contained in case records of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), U.S. Department of Labor and obtained from on-site inspections by investigators from the National Bureau of Standards. Non-compliance with OSHA construction standards has been identified with regard to formwork, field-cured concrete specimens and crane installation. Specifically, the construction procedures did not comply with standards for the removal of supporting forms. It is concluded that premature removal of forms was a contributing factor to the collapse in building A-4. An analysis of the 23rd-floor slab indicates that its most likely mode of failure was in shear around one or more columns in section 3 of the floor slab. The strength of the 23rd-floor slab on the day of collapse has been estimated to be at a level that removal of shoring could have produced shear failure in the slab.