Post-fire behaviour of concrete-filled steel tubular column to axially and rotationally restrained steel beam joint

• FEA model was established to study the post-fire behaviour of CFST column to restrained steel beam joint.
• An entire time – environmental temperature – load path was employed in the research.
• Joint moment versus relative rotation angle curve in the entire loading and fire phase were predicted.
• Simplified formulas were proposed to calculate the post-fire residual joint strength and stiffness indexes.

This paper presents a numerical investigation on the post-fire behaviour of concrete filled steel tubular (CFST) column to restrained steel beam joint. An entire loading and fire phase, including ambient loading, heating with constant loads, cooling with constant loads and post-fire loading, was employed in the numerical analysis, and a finite element analysis (FEA) model was built to simulate the behaviour of CFST column to axially and rotationally restrained steel beam joints with external diaphragm connections under the entire loading and fire phase. For validation, the proposed modelling method was used to predict the test results of CFST columns and joints in fire and post-fire. The comparison demonstrates that the accuracy of the proposed FEA model is acceptable. Afterwards, the FEA model was used to analyse the mechanics characteristics of CFST column to restrained steel beam joints in the entire loading and fire phase. Based on the numerical analysis, the joint moment versus relative rotation angle relationship in the entire loading and fire phase was addressed, and the residual joint strength index and stiffness index were defined to evaluate the post-fire performance of joints. Finally, simplified calculating formulas were proposed to calculate the two indexes, which provide a simply and feasible method to evaluate the post-fire performance of external diaphragm joints in the CFST column - steel beam framed structure.