Structural Design for Fire: A Survey of Building Codes and Standards

Abstract

This document is a critical assessment of building codes and standards pertaining to structural design for fire from the United States, Canada, European Union members, Japan, New Zealand and Australia. These countries were selected because of their vigorous research activities on this topic, and the relevance of their engineering practice to that in the US. In the US, there is a dynamic interplay between various consensus-based code writing bodies (such as the International Building Code), and professional associations (such as the Society of Fire Protection Engineers, the National Fire Protection Association, the American Society for Testing and Materials, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Institute for Steel Construction, the American Concrete Institute International, and the Precast/prestressed Concrete Institute), which can produce authoritative and influential guidance documents. It has been necessary to study not just the codes and standards, but also the specifications and guides where applicable. The review presents both prescriptive and performance-based standards, but puts more emphasis on the latter, and topics that are the subject of current research or in need of updating. The structural materials covered are steel, concrete and composites of steel and concrete. The assessment identifies gaps in U.S. codes and standards for the design of structures for fire.

Fire Resistance and Elevated Temperature in Reinforced Concrete Members: Research Needs for India

“…In this subsection, a few widely used international codes for fire resistance of concrete members, namely ACI 216R [11], ACI 216.1/TMS-0216 [12], and EN-1992-1-2 [13], would be discussed. A detailed comparison of the provisions for fire resistance of concrete members in international codes (American, Eurocode, Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand standards) is provided in National Institute of Standards and Technology document [16]. The concrete design standard from ACI [18] refers the ACI 216.1 [12] for the prescriptive requirements for fire design of reinforced concrete structures.…”

“…Adopting the simplified or advanced analysis methods as enumerated in the ACI [11,12] or Eurocode [13] would be difficult due to non-availability of the data/charts for the concrete properties at elevated temperature for India, which could be different from those provided in the international literature [11][12][13]16] due to variations in the aggregate or cement properties. Conducting such fire tests and compilation of the test results for application in fire design of concrete members by designers in India is the necessary first step for improving the fire design approach.…”

“…It highlights that in scenarios of rapid heat build-up, there might be spalling of concrete leading to exposure of reinforcement to high temperatures. IAEA recommends the reference documents drawn up by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) [29] for design of structures exposed to fire.…”

“…Such data are not readily available for use with the Indian concrete [9,10]. For normal or high-density concrete, such data are available in the international literature/codes, for example [11][12][13]16]. However, while using thermal properties developed for concrete in other countries, there would be greater uncertainty in the estimated thermal or mechanical response of the structure under fire or elevated temperature and would eventually result in more inaccuracy of the estimated fire endurance.…”

Strengths of Sulfoaluminate Cement Concrete and Ordinary Portland Cement Concrete After Exposure to High Temperatures

“…This exposure time was found to be adequate for the complete dehydration of the important mineral ingredients for the SAC: the AFt (ettringite) and Al(OH) 3 solid crystal which make up 40 -70 wt. % and are the most abundant and the most important minerals that make the cement and assure the bonding with different aggregates [10,11,12] as well as other related dehydration reactions and other thermally induced physical changes [13,14]. Each sample was allowed to cool down for seven days for observing the capacity of the different cements (SAC and OPC) to recover the strength lost after being exposure to 100 °C, 200 °C and 300 °C.…”