Do you recommend Abaqus for the simulation of progressive collapse due to column removal in RC structure? If no which finite element software do you recommend?
You can model progressive collapse triggered through column removal scenarios (CRS) through any of the available explicit FEM packages, e.g. LS-DYNA, ANSYS, ABAQUS.
Personally, I dealt with LS-DYNA, I found it quite reliable in running CRS.
LS-DYNA is more powerful when it comes to dynamic analysis as dynamic analysis (non-linear) is its core competency. Furthermore, LS-DYNA post-processing is quite convenient, unlike its pre-processing which is damn arduous. ANSYS has an easy-to-go-with GUI (same goes for ABAQUS).