Artificial cutting of 13 cable-stayed steel wire ropes that fixed pillars on the periphery of a plastic film greenhouse resulted in a lawsuit. The results of calculation show that the surrounding soil foundation was disturbed and the constraint ability of soil foundation to the pillars was weakened by the weights of greenhouse and grapes after the wire ropes were cut. It directly caused, and accelerated, the progressive collapse of the greenhouse under typhoon loading. The results also indicate that the greenhouse would not collapse under the typhoon loading if none of the steel wire ropes were cut. In other words cutting the wires was the main factor which induced the progressive collapse of greenhouse. The results of this paper were adopted by court and the farmer's damage was finally compensated. The similar collapse configurations of pillars from simulation and site photos after typhoon can prove the validity of the simulations.
['Jue Zhu', 'Xiaofeng Wu', 'Guojun Sun', 'Jiankang Chen']
Numerical simulation of the dynamic progressive collapse of a plastic film greenhouse under typhoon