Fire Design of Steel Structures

Book excerpt: This book explains and illustrates the rules that are given in the Eurocode for designing steel structures subjected to fire. After the first introductory chapter, Chapter 2 explains how to calculate the mechanical actions (loads) in the fire situation based on the information given in EN 1990 and EN 1991. Chapter 3 presents the models to be used to represent the thermal action created by the fire. Chapter 4 describes the procedures to be used to calculate the temperature of the steelwork from the temperature of the compartment and Chapter 5 shows how the information given in EN 1993-1-2 is used to determine the loan bearing capacity of the steel structure. The methods use to evaluate the fire resistance of bolted and welded connections are described in Chapter 7. Chapter 8 describes a computer program called "Elefir-EN" which is based on the simple calculation model given in the Eurocode and allows designers to quickly and accurately calculate the performance of steel components in the fire situation. Chapter 9 looks at the issues that a designer may be faced with when assessing the fire resistance of a complete building. This is done via a case study and addresses most of the concepts presented in the earlier Chapters. The concepts and fire engineering procedures given in the Eurocodes may see complex those more familiar with the prescriptive approach. This publication sets out the design process in a logical manner giving practical and helpful advice and easy to follow worked examples that will allow designer to exploit the benefits of this new approach to fire design.