Title of Document: Occupant Merging Behavior During Egress From High Rise Buildings Christopher Campbell, Master of Science, 2012 Directed By: Professor and Chair, Dr. James A. Milke, Department of Fire Protection Engineering Occupant merging behavior on stairwell landings is analyzed through the study of evacuation videos. Both flow rate and transit time analyses are conducted. Data is compare...

This paper presents results of a recent study addressing issues concerning the dynamic response of high-rise buildings. Utilizing a high-frequency base-balance, the alon~w;:~d, acrosswind and torsional components of aerodynamic loads and their statistical corm!ations for a wide range of generic building shapes of different aspect ratios in two approach flow conditions are quantified. A random-v...

The paper applies a computer-based method involving stochastic search, multi-criteria optimization and color filtering to investigate the tradeoff between the life-cycle profitability of highrise commercial office buildings and their load-path safety against progressive collapse under abnormal loading. The study was motivated by the progressive-collapse failure of the twin towers of the World T...