Ronan Point
Collapse
Group 1: Gareth Nolan
James O’Brien
Jennie Quigley
Laura Woodbyrne
Background
Housing destroyed by 2nd World War
Development of prefabricated construction
techniques
Therefore high-rise apartment buildings:
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Large numbers of people
Save land
Constructed quickly
Affordable
The Building
 Clever
Road, East London
 22 storeys high
 Total of 110 apartments
 Consisted of both one and two bed
 Cost £500,000 to build
The Structure
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Construction began on July 25 1966,
completed March 11 1968 (less than 2 yrs
to build)
Larsen – Nielsen method of construction
Developed in Denmark in 1948
Walls, floors & stairways all pre-cast
Slotted into place and connected on site
Minimise amount of on-site construction
work
Each floor was load bearing and supported the
floor above.
The collapse
5.45a.m May 16th 1968
 Apartment 90 on the 18th floor
 Struck a match to light gas stove
 Explosion due to a gas leak resulting from
a substandard brass nut
 Magnitude of explosion very minor,
(<70kPa) should not have led to such a
collapse

Apartment 90 on the
18th floor
Force of explosion knocked out the
opposite corner walls of apartment
 These walls were sole support for walls
directly above.
 Chain reaction
 All these floors collapsed onto floor 18
which was unable to take the extra weight.
 Floor 18 then collapsed onto floor 17,
which fell on floor 16 and so on to ground
level.
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Floor plan of the apartments:
Collapse
sheared of the living room and kitchen
portion of the apartments, leaving bedrooms intact
4
People died & 17 were injured.
 The reason for such low fatalities was
that almost all residents were asleep
in their bedrooms.
 All of the fatalities occurred in
apartments 17-22, where the
bedrooms also collapsed.
Cause of collapse
Lack of structural redundancy
 No fail safe mechanisms
 No alternative load paths to support
upper floors should lower floors
collapse
 Building codes not kept up to date
 Poor workmanship
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After the collapse
 Reinforced
with blast angles
 Continuing public concerns
 Demolished in May 1986, only 18
years after completion
 Life expectancy of 60 years.
Effect on building regulations
Initiated changes to the regulation codes
 Must now account for progressive collapse
 Also consider forces from an internal
explosion
 Minimum amount of ductility and
redundancy to be factored into design
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