Abstract
Once a reinforced concrete (RC) structure is damaged by fire, the fire damage assessment should proceed to take appropriate post-fire actions, including the decision-making of whether it can be repaired for reuse or not. Since the assessment results of current fire damage diagnosis methods, however, highly depend on the subjective judgment of inspectors, it is hard to ensure their objectiveness and reliability. This study, therefore, aims to develop a new fire damage diagnosis system (FDDS) based on fuzzy theory that can provide objective and comprehensive evaluation results by considering all of the damage conditions observed from the inspection on RC structural members exposed to fire. In addition, the FDDS was applied to an actual fire-damaged case reported by the Architectural Institute of Japan (AIJ, 2009), and it appears that the proposed method provides a reasonable estimation on the fire damage grade of the fire-damaged RC members.
Highlights
The fire damage levels of reinforced concrete (RC) structures significantly depend on the size and duration of the fire [1,2]
This study was aimed at establishing the new fire damage diagnosis system (FDDS), which can comprehensively consider the field inspection data in a systematic manner based on fuzzy theory and objectively evaluate the damage levels of RC members exposed to fire
The FDDS was applied to an actual fire-damaged case reported by the Architectural Institute of Japan [2], and the resulting fire damage grades of the RC members were compared to those by inspection professionals
Summary
The fire damage levels of reinforced concrete (RC) structures significantly depend on the size and duration of the fire [1,2]. If the concrete structure is exposed to high temperatures for a long time, the damage is likely to be severe in a large number of the concrete members, resulting in significant reductions in their strength and durability performances, which threatens the safety of the whole structure [3,4,5]. According to the fire damage diagnosis methods presented in the Korea Concrete Institute (KCI) [1] and the Architectural Institute of Japan (AIJ) [2], the fire damage levels of RC structures are evaluated by five grades, as shown, based on the simple visual inspection or the detailed investigations on the fire-damaged concrete members. The diagnosis results, highly depend on the experience and knowledge of the inspector; it is hard to ensure their objectiveness and reliability
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have