Predicting and Comparing the Fire Performance of a Small-Scale Composite Structure

Abstract

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 arrangements, 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 significant thermo-structural responses involved in a fire. Thermal effects within a structural element generate fire curve, thermal input and structural displacement output, in other words cause and impact. Dimensional analysis, which is a condition for dynamic similarity between prototype and model, can be achieved when all the dimensionless groups are set equal for both model and prototype. On the other hand, scaling 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 modelled at small scale with 1/5. The obtained results from various parametric investigations show that the reduced scale model fire test method would be a feasible way to investigate the fire performance of composite structures. © 2021, Tulpar Academic Publishing. All rights reserved.