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

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
• /
• 2005.03a
• /
• pp.423-430
• /
• 2005

Fire accidents in underground space may bring much loss of lives as well as properties and result in catastrophic disasters. This study aimed to manufacture the high-temperature furnace capable of simulating fire scenarios (RABT and RWS) and carry out the preliminary fire tests to evaluate fire-induced damage in underground structures. Specimens used in the fire tests were the concrete segments generally used in shield TBM tunnels. The simulated fire scenario was set to the RABT curve that is the most representative fire scenario in underground space. From the fire tests, the spalling was estimated to reach approximately 20cm from the surface exposed to fire. In addition, from the observation of core specimens obtained after fire tests, the deteriorated zone of unspalled specimens amounted to approximately 10cm from the surface of spalling.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
• /
• v.37 no.5
• /
• pp.351-357
• /
• 2019

UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) images can be exploited for rapid forest fire damage assessment by virtue of UAV systems' advantages. In 2019, catastrophic forest fire occurred in Goseong and Sokcho, Korea and burned 1,757 hectares of forests. We visited the town in Goseong where suffered the most severe damage and conducted UAV flights for forest fire damage assessment. In this study, economic and rapid damage assessment method for forest fire has been proposed using UAV systems equipped with only a RGB sensor. First, forest masking was performed using automatic elevation thresholding to extract forest area. Then ExG (Excess Green) vegetation index which can be calculated without near-infrared band was adopted to extract damaged forests. In addition, entropy filtering was applied to ExG for better differentiation between damaged and non-damaged forest. We could confirm that the proposed forest masking can screen out non-forest land covers such as bare soil, agriculture lands, and artificial objects. In addition, entropy filtering enhanced the ExG homogeneity difference between damaged and non-damaged forests. The automatically detected damaged forests of the proposed method showed high accuracy of 87%.

• Fire Science and Engineering
• /
• v.15 no.1
• /
• pp.116-126
• /
• 2001

Fire investigation to examine ignition and combustion enlargement etc., to assess fire damage and to investigate a fire suspect, is used as a valuable data for better fire suppression and fire prevention police. Fire investigation is divided in to fire-cause investigation, fire-damage investigation, and fire-criminal investigation. At present, fire-cause investigation is lacking In scientific technology; specially is deficient in accurate damage assessment. And considering fore criminal investigation, since the police lacking in specialty on fire take exclusive charge of fire criminal investigation upon general investigation, it is difficult to investigate fire criminal effectively. Finally deficiency in fire investigation operates as very big blind-spot in fire safety having important axis in social safely; the loss is shifted on nation's shoulder. To solve those problems, legal, institutional, operational preparation is urgent. And so, this study tried to stabilize specialty of fire-fighting to offer more active, qualitative fire administration service, and to contribute to public peace and welfare by grasping problems after diagnosing Korean fire investigation and proposing the solutions.

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

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
• /
• v.21 no.5
• /
• pp.171-177
• /
• 2005

Fire in underground space may induce severe structural damage as well as heavy casualties. To protect underground structure and passengers from fire, it is very essential to characterize fire-induced damage on construction materials of underground structures. In this study, the high-temperature furnace was manufactured to evaluate fire-induced damage on underground structure materials. Especially, this study aimed at the evaluation of fire-induced damage on the shield TBM concrete segment. In the fire tests, furnace temperature was set to reach 1,200 degrees at five minutes after Ignition. The temperature of 1,200 degrees was kept during one hour, and the fire was extinguished after two hours elapsed. From the temperature measurement by thermocouples embedded in test specimens, the spatting was estimated to reach approximately 20 cm from the surface exposed to fire. After the fire tests, the alteration of physico-mechanical properties and microstructures of concrete segment was investigated from core specimens. The results showed that apart from spatting, the deterioration depth of the remaining concrete material amounted to approximately 10 cm from the spatting surface.

• Safety and Health at Work
• /
• v.8 no.1
• /
• pp.42-48
• /
• 2017

Background: As one of the most frequently occurring accidents in a chemical plant, a fire accident may occur at any place where transfer or handling of combustible materials is routinely performed. Methods: In particular, a jet fire incident in a chemical plant operated under high pressure may bring severe damage. To review this event numerically, Computational Fluid Dynamics methodology was used to simulate a jet fire at a pipe of a compressor under high pressure. Results: For jet fire simulation, the Kemeleon FireEx Code was used, and results of this simulation showed that a structure and installations located within the shelter of a compressor received serious damage. Conclusion: The results confirmed that a jet fire may create a domino effect that could cause an accident aside from the secondary chemical accident.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
• /
• 2021.11a
• /
• pp.48-49
• /
• 2021

The purpose of evaluating the fire risk of a building is to predict damage or loss of life and property in unspecified circumstances and to minimize expected damage. The fire risk assessment for buildings in Korea analyzes fire risk according to performance-oriented design under the Enforcement Decree of the Fire Facilities Act and the Fire Causing Index under the Enforcement Decree of the Multi-Use Business Act. Fire risk analysis is mainly conducted by using fire statistics or analyzing the results of safety inspections of buildings. In the case of fire statistics, it is necessary to analyze the fire risk in consideration of the degree of fire damage in each number of fires, as all fires received by the fire department are collected. In addition, it is necessary to devise fire safety measures for buildings by predicting the number of casualties that may occur due to fires in each building. Accordingly, this study aims to analyze the characteristics of casualties by building use using the number of fires judged to have grown.

• Fire Science and Engineering
• /
• v.30 no.5
• /
• pp.116-123
• /
• 2016

The quantitative risk assessment methods for thermal failure in targets were studied using fire modeling. To this end, Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS), as a representative fire model, was used and the probabilities related to thermal damage to an electrical cable were evaluated according to the change in fire area inside a specific compartment. 'The maximum probability of exceeding the damage thresholds' adopted in a conservative point of view and 'the probability of failure' including the time to damage were compared. The probability of failure suggested in the present study could evaluate the quantitative fire risk more realistically, compared to the maximum probability of exceeding the damage thresholds with the assumption that thermal damage occurred the instant the target reached its minimum failure criteria in terms of the surface temperature and heat flux.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
• /
• v.26 no.3C
• /
• pp.219-228
• /
• 2006

In this study, a series of fire tests was carried out to evaluate fire-induced damage to structural members in tunnels. From the tests, the loss amount of concrete materials under the RWS scenario was slightly bigger than under the RABT fire scenario. Especially under the RWS fire scenario where the maximum temperature is over $1,200^{\circ}C$, the loss of concrete materials was mainly induced by melting. Generally, the loss of materials in reinforced concrete was slightly smaller than that in unreinforced concrete. Depending upon an applied fire scenario, fire-induced damage to shotcrete was quite different. From the realtime investigation of a specimen surface by a digital camcorder, it was proved that the material loss under the RABT fire scenario was mainly induced by spalling. However, it was also revealed that although fire-induced damage in the initial heating stage under the RWS was so close to that under the RABT, the material loss under the RWS at the later stage after 50 minutes elapsed since fire initiation was induced not by spalling but by melting.