Predicting the maximum compressive beam axial force during fire considering local buckling

Local buckling in floor beams has been one of the important observations in several fire events in steel buildings such as World Trade Center Tower 7 and large-scale fire experiments such as Cardington building test in U.K. Utilizing three dimensional finite element methods for complex geometry and nonlinear behavior of such connections, local buckling of the web followed by the buckling of the lower flange is observed to occur in early stages of fire, which causes instability to the floor system, and a significant reduction in the connection strength. The observations also suggest that the maximum compression in the floor beam is limited to the buckling capacity of the web and flanges near the connection. This paper contributes to such knowledge by investigating the local buckling of floor beams for different connection types at elevated temperatures using nonlinear finite element models. Moment connections are found to be more resistant to local buckling when compared to the shear connections. The results are also compared to the AISC design equation for plate buckling under ambient and elevated temperatures. Compared to the finite element analyses of this study, it is observed that at ambient temperature the AISC curve conservatively captures the buckling capacity of webs and flanges; at higher temperatures, AISC overestimates the capacity.

► We evaluate the elevated temperature buckling capacity of the flanges and webs.
► At higher temperatures, AISC equations overestimate the buckling capacity.
► The procedure predicts the maximum compressive axial beam force under fire (Pmax).
► For shear connections, the connection geometry can affect Pmax.