Novel Index for Structural Demolition Efficiency

Abstract The demolition process is just as important as the construction process when the building's life span comes to an end, or if there are construction or soil issues. Although there are various traditional and non-traditional demolition methods used to demolish different structures in various scenarios, there are no criteria or indicators to evaluate the efficiency of demolition methods or scenarios. Thus, an indicator is defined in this research to determine whether the demolition scenario is the optimal one. The use of this indicator provides the selection of appropriate values for parameters that control the demolition process, such as delay time, the columns to be blown up, and the collapse mechanism. The proposed indicator relies on the maximum distance of debris, which is crucial for determining the safe zone during the demolition process. To pronounce the benefit of using this indicator, it is calculated for a real-case explosive demolition radio mast with a height of 220 m and for a tall building consisting of 15 floors by using extreme loading for structures software (ELS) that uses the Applied Element Method (AEM). The delay time parameter is studied in this research to show its effect on demolition efficiency. It is found that a suggested demolition scenario for the mast tower is better than the real demolition by thirteen times, and for the multi-story building demolition, it is found that the optimum value of delay time is 0.3 sec.