Intumescent coatings are now the dominant passive fire protection materials used for steel construction. Intumescent coatings will react at high temperatures and the thermal properties of intumescent coatings can not be measured directly by the current standard test methods which are originally designed for the traditional inert fireproofing materials. This paper proposed a simple procedure to assess the fire resistance of intumescent coatings by using the concept of equivalent constant thermal resistance. The procedure is based on the approximate formula for predicting the limiting temperatures of protected steel members subjected to the standard fire. Test data from investigations on both small-scale samples and full-scale steel members are used to calculate the equivalent constant thermal resistance. Using the equivalent constant thermal resistance of intumescent coatings, the calculated steel temperatures agree well with the test data in the range of the limiting temperatures from 400°C to 600°C. The procedure needs no complex computation and is recommended for practical usage. The equivalent constant thermal resistance could be used to quantify the insulation capacity of intumescent coatings.

No abstract

Fire safety is a major concern with steel structures. Actually, steel structures were not fatally destroyed in most cases of fire. These damaged steel structures may be reused after structural inspection, safety appraisal and necessary repair. Bolted connections are the most widely used connection in steel structures. Slip coefficient is a key parameter to calculate the slip bearing capacity of bolted slip-critical connections. Currently there are few research results available about slip coefficient of bolted slip-critical connections after fire. To obtain the effect of heating and cooling on slip coefficient, a series of slip load tests on connections that had been heated and cooled to ambient temperature were carried out in this study. Methods of friction surface treatment included shot blast and painting inorganic zincs after shot blast. Test results show that heating and cooling have a great effect on slip coefficient of connections with two methods of friction surface treatment, among which effect on connections with shot blasting surfaces is more significant.