Simulating the fire-thermal-structural behavior in a localized fire test on a bare steel beam

The engineering design practice may include fire protection design of steel structures in large volumes. Prescriptive methods in fire codes are based on the concept of fire compartmentation and might be inapplicable to large volumes. As an alternative, fire engineering performance based methods are developed, which may need sophisticated numerical models to adequately simulate the responses of structures in the design fire scenarios. This paper discusses an integrated fire-structural simulation model for performance based design. Sub-models were clearly described. The fire-structure simulation model was successfully applied to model the fire-thermal-structural behaviors in two localized fire tests on a real-scale steel beam recently conducted at the National Fire Research Laboratory (NFRL) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The model might be used in performance based structural fire safety design.