Predicting and comparing the fire performance of a small-scale composite structure

Özet

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a strategy for the fire testing of reduced scale structural models which will help engineers design safer structures and reduce the loss from fires. The concept of this work is how composite frame floor arrange ments, beam-column connections might be modelled at a small scale suitable for fire testing. Testing full-scale is expensive, besides the testing of scaled model produces reasonable results which help us to understand the failure mechanism and all signif icant thermo-structural responses involved in a fire. Thermal effects within a struc tural element generate fire curve, thermal input and structural displacement output, in other words cause and impact. Dimensional analysis, which is a condition for dy namic similarity between prototype and model, can be achieved when all the dimen sionless groups are set equal for both model and prototype. On the other hand, scal ing rules are used to decide how much insulating material will be used on a structure. 5-storey composite building with composite floors and steel columns has been mod elled at small scale with 1/5. The obtained results from various parametric investi gations show that the reduced scale model fire test method would be a feasible way to investigate the fire performance of composite structures.