Finite element modelling of steel fin plate connections in fire

Recent structural collapses caused by fire have focused attention on research concerning fire safety in building design. Steel connections are an important component of any structural steel building, as they provide links between the principal structural members. The evaluation of the performance of steel connections at elevated temperatures has been a topic of several research programmes in the last few years. Determining the behaviour, available strength and stiffness of moment connections in fire conditions has been a dominant theme in these research works; however very little information on the behaviour of simple shear connections in fire conditions has been disseminated. Fin plate shear connections are easy to fabricate and install; as a result, they have gained popularity with fabricators because of their economy. In this research, the robustness of simple fin plate beam-to-column connections is being investigated under catenary tension from highly deflected beams in fire. A highly detailed three-dimensional (3-D) finite element (FE) model has been created using the ABAQUS software. This is a complex model accounting for material and geometric non-linearity, large deformation and contact behaviour. Contact is critical to model the shear behaviour of the joint, and contact elements have been used both at the bolt–hole interface and also at the surface between the web of the beam and the fin plate, taking into consideration friction between the surfaces. The connection model has been analysed through the elastic and plastic ranges up to failure. Bolt shear and bending, and plate and web bearing have been observed as failure modes. A comparison between available experimental data at ambient and elevated temperatures and other analytical results shows that the model has a high level of accuracy. When the connection model was extended to include an attached beam, it was found that it eventually experiences large tensile force when exposed to fire.