Integrated Fire-Structure Simulation of a Localzied Fire Test on a Ceiling Steel Beam

Abstract

Performance based method is increasingly used for structural fire safety design of modern buildings with large enclosure. The design fire scenarios in large enclosure are localized fires. Integrated fire-structure simulation method is required to accurately predict the response of structures in realistic fires (e.g. localized fires). In recent years, there is an increase in use of FDS (Fire Dynamics Simulator) -FEM (finite element method) approach for performance-based structural fire design. This paper discusses the FDS-FEM approach for predicting the thermal response of structures subjected to localized fires. A fire-structure interface, named adiabatic surface temperature (AST), was applied to transfer data from FDS to ANSYS. By comparing the predicted and measured heat fluxes and steel temperatures of a steel ceiling beam exposed to a localized fire condition, the FDS-FEM method was tested. The FDS predicted heat fluxes matched well with the test data. The difference between the predicted and measured maximum heat fluxes was within 6% for the investigated two cases. The FDS-FEM method gave good prediction of the steel temperatures. The over-prediction of maximum steel temperature was within 11% for the investigated case. The methods described in this study provide a feasible way to study the complex behavior of structures in realistic fires.