Title: Advanced numerical analyses for the assessment of steel structures under fire

Authors: Filippo Gentili

Addresses: School of Civil and Industrial Engineering, Sapienza Università di Roma, via Eudossiana 18 – 00184, Rome, Italy

Abstract: The aim of this paper is the analysis of the response to fire of single storey steel structures. The performance-based design allows a more realistic evaluation of fire safety than the usual prescriptive design. Several factors can affect the fire safety assessment. The paper seeks to evaluate some of them. The study of substructure may not be sufficient in some cases for highlighting the actual behaviour of the whole structure. The progression of the collapse has to be traced up to the global collapse of the structure and numerical problems due to the triggering of local mechanisms should be overcome to this purpose. The interaction of the heated elements with the rest of the structure can raise different collapse mechanisms depending on the mutual position of the elements. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model represents an advanced solution to study the development of fire.

Keywords: numerical analysis; fire-induced collapse; nonlinearities; fire modelling; computational fluid dynamics; CFD; snap through; steel structures; performance-based design; fire safety; collapse mechanisms; fire development; fires; structural engineering.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLCPE.2013.057561

International Journal of Lifecycle Performance Engineering, 2013 Vol.1 No.2, pp.159 - 184

Accepted: 20 Jul 2012
Published online: 29 Jul 2014 *

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