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What’s Pancake Collapse, Miami Surfside Building Case
How Pancake Collapse Can Be Danger.
Pancake collapse is a structural collapse where the collapse occurs from the top-down as upper floors settle into lower floors of a building or other structures.
Pancake collapses are dangerous, and their damage can complicate search and rescue efforts.
Here’s how it happen.
“Pancake collapses tend to ‘stack’ floors on themselves, bringing all their weight down nearly square on the floor below,”
When a building experience progressive collapse and a primary structural element fails, resulting in the failing of adjoining structural elements, which in turn causes further structural failure.
And a structural failure is initiated when a material is stressed beyond its strength limit, causing fracture or excessive deformations.
In a well-designed building, a localized failure should not cause immediate or even progressive collapse of the entire structure.
As I can read from the news, there were many problems…
Also, progressive collapses may be accidental, as the result of design deficiencies, fire, unintentional overload, material failure, or erosion, earthquakes, or winds.
