• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.323-334
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• 2021

Concrete structures may rarely collapse in fire incidents but fire induced damage to structural members is inevitable as a result of material degradation and thermal expansion. This requires certain repairing measures to be applied to restore the performance of post-fire members. A brief review on investigation of post-fire damage of concrete material and concrete structural members is presented in this paper, followed by a review of post-fire repair research regarding various types of repairing techniques (FRP, steel plate, and concrete section enlargement) and different type of structural members including columns, beams, and slabs. Particularly, the fire scenarios adopted in these studies leading to damage are categorized as three levels according to the duration of gas-phase temperature above 600℃ (t₆₀₀). The repair effectiveness in terms of recovered performance of concrete structural members compared to the initial undamaged performance has been summarized and compared regarding the repairing techniques and fire intensity levels. The complied results have shown that recovering the ultimate strength is achievable but the stiffness recovery is difficult. Moreover, the current fire loading scenarios adopted in the post-fire repair research are mostly idealized as constant heating rates or standard fire curves, which may have produced unrealistic fire damage patterns and the associated repairing techniques may be not practical. For future studies, the realistic fire impact and the system-level structural damage investigation are necessary.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.379-394
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• 2013

Post-earthquake fire (PEF) can lead to a rapid collapse of buildings damaged partially as a result of prior earthquake. Almost all standards and codes for the design of structures against earthquake ignore the risk of PEF, and thus buildings designed using those codes could be too weak when subjected to a fire after an earthquake. An investigation based on sequential analysis inspired by FEMA356 is performed here on the Immediate Occupancy, Life Safety and Collapse Prevention performance levels of structures, designed to the ACI 318-08 code, after they are subjected to an earthquake level with PGA of 0.35g. This investigation is followed by a fire analysis of the damaged structures, examining the time taken for the damaged structures to collapse. As a point of reference, a fire analysis is also performed for undamaged structures and before the occurrence of earthquake. The results indicate that the vulnerability of structures increases dramatically when a previously damaged structure is exposed to PEF. The results also show that the damaging effects of post-earthquake fire are exacerbated when initiated from the second and third floor. Whilst the investigation is made for a certain class of structures (conventional buildings, intermediate reinforced structure, 3 stories), the results confirm the need for the incorporation of post-earthquake fire into the process of analysis and design, and provides some quantitative measures on the level of associated effects.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.29-44
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• 2013

Post earthquake fire (PEF) can lead to the collapse of buildings that are partially damaged in a prior ground-motion that occurred immediately before the fire. The majority of standards and codes for the design of structures against earthquake ignore the possibility of PEF and thus buildings designed with those codes could be too weak when subjected to a fire after an earthquake. An investigation based on sequential analysis inspired by FEMA356 is performed here on the Life-Safety performance level of structures designed to the ACI 318-08 code after they are subjected to two different earthquake levels with PGA of 0.35 g and 0.25 g. This is followed by a four-hour fire analysis of the weakened structure, from which the time it takes for the weakened structure to collapse is calculated. As a benchmark, the fire analysis is also performed for undamaged structure and before occurrence of earthquake. The results show that the vulnerability of structures increases dramatically when a previously damaged structure is exposed to PEF. The results also show the damaging effects of post earthquake fire are exacerbated when initiated from second and third floor. Whilst the investigation is for a certain class of structures (regular building, intermediate reinforced structure, 3 stories), the results confirm the need for the incorporation of post earthquake fire in the process of analysis and design and provides some quantitative measures on the level of associated effects.

• International Journal of Concrete Structures and Materials
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.209-220
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• 2012

Post-earthquake fire (PEF) can lead to a rapid collapse of buildings that have been partially damaged as a result of a prior earthquake. Almost all standards and codes for the design of structures against earthquake ignore the risk of PEF, and thus buildings designed using those codes could be too weak when subjected to a fire after an earthquake. An investigation based on sequential analysis inspired by FEMA356 is performed here on the immediate occupancy (IO), life safety (LS) and collapse prevention (CP) performance levels of two portal frames, after they are pushed to arrive at a certain level of displacement corresponding to the mentioned performance level. This investigation is followed by a fire analysis of the damaged frames, examining the time taken for the damaged frames to collapse. As a point of reference, a fire analysis is also performed for undamaged frames and before the occurrence of earthquake. The results indicate that while there is minor difference between the fire resistances of the fire-alone situation and the frames pushed to the IO level of performance, a notable difference is observed between the fire-alone analysis and the frames pushed to arrive at LS and CP levels of performance and exposed to PEF. The results also show that exposing only the beams to fire results in a higher decline of the fire resistance, compared to exposing only the columns to fire. Furthermore, the results show that the frames pushed to arrive at LS and CP levels of performance collapse in a global collapse mode laterally, whereas at the IO level of performance and fire-alone situation, the collapse mechanism is mostly local through the collapse of beams. Whilst the investigation is conducted for a certain class of portal frames, the results confirm the need for the incorporation of PEF into the process of analysis and design, and provide some quantitative measures on the level of associated effects.

• Proceedings of the Korea Institute of Fire Science and Engineering Conference
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• 2008.04a
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• pp.7-10
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• 2008

Heat release characteristics of live fire load are an important parameter for performance oriented fire safety design of a building. While investigations have been carried out on the fire load and its burning behavior in office, residential and commercial buildings and so on, little effort has been paid for the rational treatment of fire load in post office buildings in Japan. In this report, burning behavior of typical combustible objects in post office buildings are studied by measuring heat release rates of plastic palettes with and without postal envelopes or packages and special containers loading numbers of palettes. The test results suggest that dynamic heat release rate is highly dependent on the condition of palettes especially if they load appropriate amount of postal envelopes or not.

• Proceedings of the Korea Institute of Fire Science and Engineering Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.310-315
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• 2008

The objective of design for a post flash-over fire is contain the fire and prevent structural collapse, as necessary to meet the performance requirements. In the post flash-over phase of a fire all of the combustible objects in the compartment are burning and the heat release rate is limited either by the fuel surface area or the available air supply. So for the PBD situations, the process of evaluation method for fire phenomena is very important. It is the aim of this study to investigate and analyze the evaluation method of structural fire resistance in Japan.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.137-145
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• 2022

As steel is highly sensitive to temperature variations, fire exposure is more destructive in the case of steel structures in comparison to the concrete ones. The performance of an intermediate three-story steel moment frame with 4 spans was studied under the service load, thermal load and post-earthquake fire in this paper. Also, the effects of passive fire-protection materials such as ordinary cement-based and fire-retardant coatings were investigated. To model and analyze the structure; Abaqus software is utilized. In order to apply the earthquake effect, the push-over analysis method is employed. Changes in the stories deflection, endurance time and growth of nonlinear regions due to losses in the steel stiffness and strength, are among the issues considered in this study. As an interesting finding, the beams protected by ordinary cement-based coating could sustain the fire exposure at least for 30 minutes in all cases. The mentioned time is increased by employing a new fire-retardant protection, which could prevent significant loss in the structure resistance against fire, even after 60 minutes of exposure to fire.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.43 no.5
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• pp.673-688
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• 2022

Post-earthquake fire is a major threat since most structures are designed allowing some damage during strong earthquakes, which will expose a more vulnerable structure to post-earthquake fire compared to an intact structure. A series of experimental research on steel-concrete composite beam-to-column joints subjected to fire after cyclic loading has been carried out and a clear reduction of fire resistance due to the partial damage caused by cyclic loading was observed. In this paper, by using ABAQUS a robust finite element model is developed for exploring the performance of steel-concrete composite joints in post-earthquake fire scenarios. After validation of these models with the previously conducted experimental results, a comprehensive numerical analysis is performed, allowing influential parameters affecting the post-earthquake fire behavior of the steel-concrete composite joints to be identified. Specifically, the level of pre-damage induced by cyclic loading is regraded to deteriorate mechanical and thermal properties of concrete, material properties of steel, and thickness of the fire protection layer. It is found that the ultimate temperature of the joint is affected by the load ratio while fire-resistant duration is relevant to the heating rate, both of which change due to the damage induced by the cyclic loading.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.351-364
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• 2019

Earthquake and fire are both severe disasters for building structures. Since earthquake-induced damage will weaken the structure and reduce its fire endurance, it is important to investigate the behavior of structure subjected to post-earthquake fire. In this paper, steel-concrete composite beam-to-column joints were tested under fire with pre-damage caused by cyclic loads. Beforehand, three control specimens with no pre-damage were tested to capture the static, cyclic and fire-resistant performance of intact joints. Experimental data including strain, deflection and temperature recorded at several points are presented and analyzed to quantify the influence of cyclic damage on fire resistance. It is indicated that the fire endurance of damaged joints decreased with the increase of damage level, mainly due to faster heating-up rate after cyclic damage. However, cracks induced by cyclic loading in concrete are found to mitigate the concrete spalling at elevated temperatures. Moreover, the relationship between fire resistance and damage degree is revealed from experimental results, which can be applied in fire safety design and is worthwhile for further research.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.111-122
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• 2019

This paper presents an experimental work on the post-fire behavior of two kinds of innovative composite stub columns under eccentric compression. The partially precast steel reinforced concrete (PPSRC) column is composed of a precast outer-part cast using steel fiber reinforced reactive powder concrete (RPC) and a cast-in-place inner-part cast using conventional concrete. Based on the PPSRC column, the hollow precast steel reinforced concrete (HPSRC) column has a hollow column core. With the aim to investigate the post-fire performance of these composite columns, six stub column specimens, including three HPSRC stub columns and three PPSRC stub columns, were exposed to the ISO834 standard fire. Then, the cooling specimens and a control specimen unexposed to fire were eccentrically loaded to explore the residual capacity. The test parameters include the section shape, concrete strength of inner-part, eccentricity ratio and heating time. The test results indicated that the precast RPC shell could effectively confine the steel shape and longitudinal reinforcements after fire, and the PPSRC stub columns experienced lower core temperature in fire and exhibited higher post-fire residual strength as compared with the HPSRC stub columns due to the insulating effect of core concrete. The residual capacity increased with the increasing of inner concrete strength and with the decreasing of heating time and load eccentricity. Based on the test results, a FEA model was established to simulate the temperature field of test specimens, and the predicted results agreed well with the test results.