Even though significant advances have been achieved with the numerical simulations of concrete structures based on the solid finite element and advanced constitutive material models, a full scale simulation of a construction is still prohibitive for a solid model. The limitations due to both the hardware and software often prevents a simulation at a realistic scale. Structural elements such as the beam and shell elements have become necessary in the simulation when the scale of the model increases. To identify advantages and limitations of structural elements are essential for modelling, accuracy, and computational efficiency. In this study, structural shell element types available in LS-DYNA are reviewed for their theoretical background and advantages and limitations for a general understanding. Guidelines are established for the use of structural elements for a full scale simulation of the concrete structures. In addition, the material models for the structural elements are reviewed to increase understanding of the models and their parameters to characterize behaviors of the concretes and the reinforcement. Several structural solutions for the simulation have been studied in the simplification of the numerical model for reinforced concrete structures. The reinforcement in the concrete has been considered for the reinforcement bars being explicitly modelled with structural beam elements, or as equivalent laminate layers in concrete shells, in addition to the possibility given by the material model to distribute the effect of reinforcements evenly in the concrete elements. Validations and verifications have been performed with the experimental results for both thick and thin concrete specimens with asymmetric reinforcement. These validations showed that explicit modelling of rebars in the concrete, together with a fully integrated shell formulation, provide the most accurate results. Such a solution provides similar accuracy as that of the solid model with fine element size when the general damage is comparatively small. Simulations with the structural element model with explicit rebars are in several orders of magnitude faster compared to a solid model. A generic structural model has been created in this work for a demonstration of the method for a full scale building of sixteen floors with 96 apartments. The model has been used to investigate efficiency of various solutions. It is shown that a smeared assumption with reduced integration shell element formulation does not lead to significant different damage scenario. With the generic model, several cases have been studied for the air blast load of different charge weights and placements. Compared to the simple method based on the structural components using the pressure-impulse criteria, the full scale simulations reveals much insight into how a building may respond to an air blast loading event. It is demonstrated there will be significant difference between the estimation based on the components and a full scale simulation. It is shown that various critical aspects such as the general cracking, the fatality risk zone and the structural collapse etc., can be reasonably accounted for with a full scale simulation.