Progressive collapse denotes a failure of a major portion of a structure that has been initiated by failure in a relatively small portion of the structure. One approach to evaluate progressive collapse of structures is to study the effects of instantaneous removal of a load‐bearing element such as a column. An experimental program is carried out to study the behavior of a 3/8 scaled model of a continuous perimeter beam in a reinforced concrete frame structure following the removal of a supporting column. A detailed finite element model (FEM) is developed and verified to capture the behavior of the beam subjected to large deformation. In order to avoid a detailed FEM of the whole building and to efficiently capture the system response, a three‐dimensional nonlinear model of the structure using beam–column and shell elements is also developed. The two models are integrated through hybrid (substructuring) simulations. The potential progressive collapse of the structure and the dynamic load redistributions following column removals are studied. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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