Fire-Resistance of Restrained Steel Columns

Abstract

Traditionally, the fire resistance of a steel column is obtained through a standard fire resistance test conducted on a simply supported compressive specimen subjected to the standard fire exposure, such as ISO834[1]. Although the standard fire resistance test is a convenient way for grading the relative fire performance of different types of structural members, for a number of reasons it is not very effective in developing our understanding of realistic structural behavior in a fire. An important shortcoming is that standard fire resistance tests are carried out on the individual structural member, not on a complete structure. Therefore, structural interactions cannot be assessed. The Broadgate fire[2,3] and the series of Cardington fire tests and the following theoretical analysis[4,5,6] have all shown that strong interactions exist among slabs, columns and beams. An effective way of studying structural interactions in a fire is to perform fire tests on restrained steel members.