the University of Oklahoma

TERM PAPER

ON

FIRE RESISTANCE

BY

AFNAN ALI

SUBMITTED TO PROF. DR. CHRIS RAMSEYER

Date: 07/10/2016

i
Introduction

In 2015 alone, there were 501,500 structure fires, causing 2,685 civilian deaths,

13,000 civilian injuries, and $10.3 billion in property damage in United States. It is

evident that fire incidents in building structures are very high as fire incident in

building is reported every 83 seconds in United States (NFPA 2016). There are

different ways to protect human life and property such as active & passive fire

protection and fire prevention i.e. by educating users and operators of the facility. Fire

prevention methods are mostly used in industries like oil & gas, it normally does not

apply on residential structures. Active measures include fire alarm, detection system

or sprinklers etc. National Fire Protection Associations annual report: The NFPA

has no record of a fire killing more than two people in completely sprinkled building

where the system was properly operating, except in an explosion or flash fire, or

where industrial fire brigade members or employees were during fire suppression

operations. But it is possible for the private and public investors to invent on

expansive sprinklers system? This question brings us back to passive fire protection

methods.

Passive fire protection measures are built into the structural system by choice of

building materials, dimensions of building components & compartmentation and fire

protection materials (NIST 2010). It is necessary to have better understanding of the

behavior of steel as material and as a structural component to provide adequate

design. While the current prescriptive methodology has proven adequate for

conventional in most instances, it has been criticized as a fire protection measure by

structural engineers and by the steel industry because steel is penalized by the cost of

fire protection (Ellingwood 2015). Furthermore, a wide spread perception exists that

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prescriptive methods are not cost effective. The shortcoming in the current practices

for providing fire resistance have motivated the recent shift towards performance-

based fire engineering that requires a better response when exposed to elevated

temperatures of the fire.

Building Fire History

New York Plaza Fire (Beitel and Iwankiw 2005)

The 1 New York Plaza (New York, NY) a 50-storey high rise office building, having

been constructed on a steel frame and a core of R.C.C, with a passive fire protection

system of steel using SFRM (Spray applied Fire Resistive Material) lacked any

sprinkler system for fire protection. The fire which broke out on August 5, 1970

continued for more than six hours affecting extreme damage to the bolted

connections. Some filler beams dropped on the bottom flange of the main girder due

to the sheared bolts, but the building survived the fire. After an inquiry, it was

determined that during the initial phase when the fire broke out, the light spray on fire

resistive material peeled off that produced damage to the floor system.

The First Interstate Bank Fire (FEMA Technical Report 1988)

The First Interstate Bank (Los Angeles, CA) is a 62-level office building, has a central

concrete core which is surrounded by steel column trees. There was a fire incident on

May 4, 1988 in an open-office area on the 12th floor of this building. Office furniture,

paper documents, and computer terminals were the source of fuel. The fire devastated

12 to 16 floors within 3.5 hours causing an estimated loss of about $200 million. The

fire could not be controlled in its early stage because the sprinkler system that cost

around $3.5million was being installed in the building and was only 90% completed at

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the time of fire. The building survived the fire although its five floors were completely

burned. Luckily, there was no damage to the structural members also.

The Broadgate Phase 8 Fire (Lamont 2006)

It is a 14-floors steel frame office building located in London, England. Its structure is

made of W shape steel beams and steel trusses composite with a concrete slab. The

fire incident took place in this building in 1990 when the building was constructed but

lacked fire protection. Timber products in this building were the main driving source

for fire. This fire lasted for about 4.5 hours and completely destroyed 5 floors of the

building. There was enormous damage to the structural elements of the building but it

did not collapsed.

One Meridian Plaza (FEMA Technical Report 1991)

One Meridian Plaza is a 38 story high rise building in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its

framing was of steel while core was made up of concrete. It does not had a sprinkler

system, in fact it had fire proofing material sprayed on structural steel. There was a

fire incident on the 22nd floor of the building on February 23, 1991 and lasted for 18

hours. It caused about $100 million in damage by damaging the 8 floors of the

building. In spite of a great damage on the exterior of the building, the main structure

survived this catastrophe and the building did not collapsed. Temporary support

shores were added to avoid failing of the floors.

The World Trade Center Fire Building 1 and 2 (NIST NCSTAR 1-6)

The World Trade Center Buildings 1 and 2 which were attacked by terrorists on

September 11th, 2001 were also destroyed by fire. The fire erupted in both the

buildings as soon as the airplanes hit the building. The fuel carried by the airplanes

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were the driving source of the fire. WTC 1 collapsed after 1.5 hours of the fire, while

WTC 2 did so 1 hour after the fire. The investigation report of WTC collapse by NIST

stated that the collapse was due to the expansion of the floors because of the

temperature increased by fire at an early stage. This expansion pushed the exterior

columns out, further weakening the framing system. Floors showed great sag. The

catenary forces produced in sagged floor systems dragged the exterior columns inside.

The floor no longer acted as a brace to the fire-weakened columns and the interior

gravity columns were no longer capable of carrying the gravity loads. The loss of the

gravity load columns triggered the progressive collapse of whole building. (FEMA

403)

Caracas Tower Fire (Engineering News Record 2004)

It is 56 story office building situated in Caracas, Venezuela. Its framing system is

made up of steel while all of its floors are composite. This building consisted of

sprayed on fire proofing and in addition the sprinkler system was also installed. In

spite of all this safety measurements, fire broke out on the 34th floor of the building

and damaged 26 of its floors and lasted 17 hours. This event occurred on October 17,

2004. After investigation, it was concluded that the sprinkler system failed during the

fire. Both sprayed on fire proofing and sprinklers were installed in the building but the

sprinkler system malfunctioned during fire. There was a terrific amount of fire

damage to the building, 16 of its floors had to be demolished and rebuilt.

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The Windsor Building Fire (INTEMAC, 2005)

The Windsor Building is a 32 floors office building in Madrid, Spain. It was

constructed with a steel exterior 10 frame and steel-reinforced concrete core. On the

night of February 12, 2005, a fire erupted on its 21st storey and burned the building

for almost 48 hours. The building survived the fire but, the exterior frame from 21 st to

32nd floors collapsed. Due to a shortage of water, it took great amount of time to

control the fire due to which huge damage occurred.

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Behavior of Steel under fire

Steel is a non-combustible material, but its yield strength and Youngs modulus de-

grade quickly at high temperature, which make the steel have a low fire resistance. At

the temperature of 1100F, the steel will lose most of its strength and stiffness (Li

2013). The fire in the building may cause global collapse to the steels structure or to

the structural components. Steel has high thermal conductivity and low specific heat

combine with the loss of stiffness and strength at elevated temperatures (Buchanan

2002). The basis for these rules in the US is the standard fire resistance test used for

building frame elements specified in ASTM E119. This approach has changed little in

the last 100 years, and has been widely recognized as an inadequate basis for

structural fire safety design (Hu 2011). It is more important to evaluate the thermal

and structural interaction between structural components during a realistic fire and

their influence on the overall fire resistance of the building structure. Most columns

test in the United States are being conducted without axial loading in the furnaces due

to expensive facilities required to perform test. These unloaded column tests were

conducted by uniformly heating the column length in a gas furnace following ASTM

E119-2010 T-t (Temperature Time) curve. The design fire resistance rating (FRR)

value is obtained as the time when the average temperature of the member cross

section exceeds 1000F. Unfortunately, these standard fire tests provide insufficient

information regarding the structural behavior and failure of members subjected to fire

loading. In addition, the ASTM E119 (2010) T- t curve does not compare favorably

with the realistic temperature-time relationship (Varma 2011).

Over last fifteen years notable analytical and experimental work has been carried out.

Most of which have been carried out in Europe and China. Cardington program was

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the most significant programs for investigating steel structure under fire. It was an

eight story steel framed structure with composite floors and beams were not fire

protected. Despite the absence of fire protection, the floor system and the entire

structure was capable of sustaining severe fire exposure without collapse. It

demonstrated the potential for significant cost saving in the fire protection while still

maintaining the safety of the steel structure under fire exposure (Hu 2011). Outcome

of the research was that the ability of the floor system to survive a fire by

development of tensile catenary and membrane action resulting from the large vertical

displacements which normally occur in a fire (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Floor system response in Cardington fire test (Hu 2011)

This is a highly beneficial system of a full composite floor system is not recognized

in current US standards and typical practice, where fire protection requirements for

structural steel beams are based on a standard fire test of isolated floor assemblies

(Usmani 2001).

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Stress/Strain relation of steel in fire

There are two ways to test steel in tension, Steady-state test in which steel sample is

heated without load or any restrained. Then sample is loaded is loaded at which stress

and strains are required. Other method is transient test in which sample is loaded to

required stress level. Constant required stress is applied with increase in temperature

until fracture. Stress measured in the steady-state tests were somewhat longer than

those measured in the transient tests when only small strains are considered. For larger

strains, however, the two testing methods produced similar results (Kirby 1988).

Yu (2006) tested A572 Gr. 50 steel of dia. 3/8 and 1/2 inch. Test samples were heated

to target temperature under zero loads. Then load was applied at constant temperature

until facture was occurred. Figure 4a and figure 4b represents the stress strain curves

of dia. Gr. 50ksi reinforcement bar. From temperature 84F to 392F a clear

plateau can be found on the curve. Beyond 572F yield plateau cannot be found. At

temperatures 572F, 752F and 932F steel entered hardening status right after elastic

part. At 1112F, 1292F and 1472F, hardening part became shorter, followed by

slow unloading. On each curve, V shapes were created by 30 seconds suspension in

crosshead movement. As temperature went up, the V-Shapes became larger with

wider opening which shows more relaxation and creep behavior in steel at higher

temperature. The creep and relaxation behavior of steel from 752F to 1472F

indicated that loading rate would have significant effects on yield and ultimate

strength in this temperature range (Yu 2006)

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Figure 4a: Stress-Strain curve of steel at elevated temperature (Yu 2006)

Figure 4b: Stress-Strain curve of steel at elevated temperature (Yu 2006)

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Increase in temperature leading to catenary action in beam

Thermal strains induced in the members through heating the most important factor

that determines a real structure response to the unavoidable thermal strains due to

temperature gradient. If the member has insufficient end translational restrain to

thermal expansion, the considerable strains are taken up in displacements, producing a

displacement-dominated response. Members whose ends are restrain against

translation produce opposing mechanical strains to thermal expansion strains and

therefore large compressive stresses. Curvature strains induced by the thermal

gradient in the members whose end are rotationally restrained can lead to large

hogging (negative) bending moments throughout the length of the member without

deflection. The effect of induced curvature in members whose ends are rotationally

unrestrained, but translationally retrained, is to produce tension (Usmani 2001). Most

situation in real structures under fire have a complex mix of mechanical strains due to

applied loading and mechanical strains due to restrained thermal expansion. These

lead to combined mechanical strains which often far exceed the yield values, resulting

in extensive plastification.

Thermal expansion of the simple supported beam which is free to expand from one

end will extend. Only thermal strain will be induced which will result in expansion in

longitudinal direction as shown in Figure 2a.

Clearly, usually beams in real life do not have the freedom to expand as shown in

Figure 2a. When the beam shown in Figure 2b is subjected to increase in temperature

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there is no thermal expansion in longitudinal direction because it is cancelled out by

the contraction produced by the restraining for P as shown in Figure 2b.

When the beam has enough capacity, at some point axial stresses will reach the yield

stress and then beam will continue to yield without any further increase in stress

(elastic-plastic behavior). If the temperature is allowed to rise further, then the total

restraining force will stay constant (assuming an elastic material and no thermal

degradation of properties) and the thermal expansion strains will continue to be

accommodated by the outward deflection of the beam as shown in Figure 2c.

Yielding or buckling may occur depending on slenderness of the beam or a complex

behavior which is the combination of both may also occur. After the significant

increase in compression forces at the restrained points, these forces will change into

tension forces due to catenary action of the beam.

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Similar phenomenon is also explained by Rotter J.M. in his paper, he compares two

beams. In the first case is heated simply supported beam which is laterally

unrestrained with uniformly distributed load. The second case is the beam which is

laterally restrained but rotationally unrestrained beam with the same load. In the first

beam which is laterally unrestrained deflections are lower because the supports are

able to translate outward due to expansion. Runaway occurs at around 842F (even

though considerable steel strength remains) mainly because of pulling in of the

supports when the flexural stiffness of the beam reduces to a point where it cannot

sustain the imposed load and there is nothing to restrain the growing deflection

(Rotter 1999). In the second beam which is laterally restrained initially deflection

occurs because the beam buckles due to restraining forces very early on 158F and

further increase in length due to thermal expansion can only accommodated in

deflection. But runaway does not occur until much later 1652F when the steel

properties are completely lost (Rotter 1999). This runaway in laterally restrained beam

are developed at much higher temperature because of development of catenary action

12
would replace the lost in flexural strength of the beam due to temperature gradient.

Figure 3: Behavior of restrained and unstrained beam under fire load (Rotter 1999).

Thermal Gradient

Variation in behavior of steel member will occur if the member is not under same

thermal gradient on all four sides. As shown in figure 5. In real life thermal gradient is

usually different on all four sides for example if there is fire in the room, the bottom

flange of the roof beam will be under larger temperature than the top flange of the

beam.

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Figure 5: Fire scenarios and P-M curves at different gradients (Mahmoud 2010).

Stiffness and strength properties of steel will be different during the depth of the

section due to unequal heat distribution in the section. Due to this variation in stiffness

and strength of steel this leads to eccentricity between center of geometry and center

of stiffness, the axial force will act eccentrically on the section and greater bending

moment will be occurred. This bending moment can cause a shift in the plastic P-M

diagram. W24x64 section of the beam, load-moment interaction curve for different

thermal gradients is shown in Figure 5. The average temperature of the section is

maintained at 932F and the temperature gradient of the member is increase from 0F

to 150F. Through direct integration of the ultimate stresses across the cross section of

each case of thermal gradient, the interaction curves are computed.

Fire Scenario

The development of temperature and restrained forces in beam-column depends the

type of fire scenario. Current information is based on the fire resistance test on

restrained columns or beams typical exposed to the standard fire. But in reality the

behavior of the fire is dependent on the fuel load and ventilation characteristics of the

compartment (Buchanan 2002). Other main different is that in standard fire exposure

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the cooling effect is ignored which has significant effect of the behavior of members

especially restrained beam columns. As the result of the exhaustion of fuel and/or

ventilation the compartment enters the cooling phase as the fire the in the building

dies down. This change of temperature from high to low has significant effect on the

behavior restrained members particularly. During decay phase of design fire steel

starts to recover its strength and stiffness as the temperature goes down to normal

results in contraction of beam and recovery of its deformation. The recovery depends

on the stress state of steel before the start of cooling period. Under realistic fire there

is still lack of information on cooling phase steel (Mahmoud 2010).

Cooling of restrained beams

During the heating process of the restrained beam local flange buckling near the

supports is occurred due to large compressive forces due to restrains, but at the time of

cooling beam-column connection were damaged where the bolt on the header plate on

the header plate of the beam sheared because of contraction of beam (Wang 2000).

Li and Guo (2007) tested the two different specimens of beams. Both members were

double channel beams (symmetric) and top flange was covered with the ceramic

blanket to depict the behavior similar to a composite beam supporting a slab over it.

Ceramic blanket is provided to protect top flange from heating. Only difference

between samples was the distance between the test sample and beam over it. It was

done to change unsupported length of the column which is change the behavior of the

restrains of the beams. The results showed that the behavior of the restrained beam is

wholly different from typical simply supported beams. When the heating is initiated

the compressive forces are generated in the steel beam due to restrains. Then if the

temperature keeps on increasing the deflection in the beams will increase and cause

15
the catenary action and tension forces at the supports this is when thermal expansion

overcomes over the thermal action. Local buckling near the supports were noticed

which resulted in reduction in the stiffness of the beam hugely. During the cooling

period, the tension forces on the restrained are increased due to contraction. Larger is

the axial stiffness of the restrains, larger the tension the force will be (Li 2007).

Properties of Structural Bolts under Elevated Temperatures

Behavior of structural bolts has significant impact on the performance of end framing

steel under fire. Normally, structural bolts are made of high strength steel and they act

as an important link between connection components. They behave differently than

the steel used in beam or column because of the difference in proportions of alloys in

the steel bolts.

Testing methods are similar to ambient temperature, the strength of structural bolts are

determined using bolt shear factor test and bolt fraction tension test. Hardness is used

as a parameter to determine the residual stresses of bolts after fire. Stress/Strain

relationship can be obtained by tensile test.

Eurocode 3 (2006) gives the strength reduction factors for bolts under high

temperature. These factors can be seen in table 1. It is evident from the table below

that strength of bolts reduces to almost fifty percent at temperatures above 500C.

Connections are critical members and failure of connection will be catastrophic.

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 Table 1 Strength Reduction factor for bolts (Euro 3 2006)

Behavior of ASTM bolts under double has been studied by (Yu 2006) at elevated

temperatures. ASTM A325 and A490 were tested under shear at temperature up to

800C. He also investigated the residual shear capacity of A325 and A490 bolts at

temperatures up to 800C by cooling of bolts after reaching target temperature.

Outcome of this study was that the bolts of both type A325 and A490 lost their

strength permanently after going above temperature 400C to 500C. Effects of

cooling rate and heating time are not significant which were where found during the

test.

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 Figure 6: Shear capacities of A325 and A490 bolts (Yu 2006)

Figure 7a: Residual stresses of A325 (Yu 2006)

Figure 7b: Residual stresses of A490 (Yu 2006)

Bolted Connections

Single bolt connections having plate thickness of 3/8 and grade 50 tested by (Yu

2006). The dynamic yield strength was found to be 57.1ksi and dynamic ultimate

strength of plate is 78.1 ksi at ambient temperature. Bolt has dia. of 7/8 and the

end distance is 1xDia and 1.5xDia was tested under axial tensile load. Bolt type is

A325 with 3 length. The bolts were snugged tight only which reduced friction

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force between plates connected. Both type of end distances 1xD and 1.5x D were

tested at different levels of temperature.

Figure 8 summarizes the results of the tests. At different temperature intervals load

capacity of single bolt connection and end hole distances are shown. It can be seen

that from ambient temperature to 300C the capacity increase from approximately

26k to 31kips which is around 20% increment. 2% dropped in capacity is observed

when the temperature is increased from 300C to 400C. Significant reduction in

strength of connection is observed when the temperature goes between 400C to

600C which is 40% of the original strength.

Figure 8: Single bolt connection capacity

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Conclusion

Frequency of the building structure fire in United State in substantially high and

with popularity of steel structure, there are many areas to explore to in the of fire

resistance from human behavior (e.g. safe evacuation) to passive methods to

protect the structure.

It has been realized that the behavior of steel under fire is quite dissimilar at

ambient temperature. Interaction among the structural members of unprotected

steel beams and composite floors have higher capacity than the prediction from

conventional fire in the past. More experimental data is required to improve the

predictive methods steel under fire. Catenary action plays an important role in fact

it increases the load carrying capacity of the floor beams but the forces induced

from catenary action may become the reason of failure for connections. Shear

connections suspected to fire must be designed for shear force as well as axial

forces induced due to restrain and catenary actions. Post fire effects on the

structure should be also taken into account because steel tries to regain its stiffness

while cooling. Better understand of the different fire scenarios is also required

because action such as bowing effect may occur in roof beam with bottom flange

experiencing higher temperature gradient.

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