Abstract
Despite building fires may occur as a consequence of a previous earthquake, current regulations do not require fire verifications on a structure previously or concurrently solicited by a seismic action, thus implicitly considering fire and earthquake as a statistically independent accidental actions.
On the other side, modern seismic design relies on the structural ductility, meaning that a post-earthquake fire will act on a weakened and deformed structure, which could potentially possess a lower fire resistance than expected by the design performed on an integer structure.
This paper aims at investigating the post-earthquake fire resistance of steel buildings, looking in particular at the structural response of two uninsulated steel moment resisting frames of different height (a 5-storey and a 10-storey frame). Each frame was subjected to two different earthquakes, selected among 9 different accelerograms, and then several different fire scenarios were considered, where the elements involved in the fire were assigned a temperature history calculated from a standard fire exposure. Times of local element failure and global collapse in case of post-earthquake fire are reported and compared with the case of fire acting on the integer structure. The results show that the fire resistance of both frames is not strongly affected by a previous earthquake, but the collapse mechanism can in some cases change in a detrimental way for firefighting operations.
On the other side, modern seismic design relies on the structural ductility, meaning that a post-earthquake fire will act on a weakened and deformed structure, which could potentially possess a lower fire resistance than expected by the design performed on an integer structure.
This paper aims at investigating the post-earthquake fire resistance of steel buildings, looking in particular at the structural response of two uninsulated steel moment resisting frames of different height (a 5-storey and a 10-storey frame). Each frame was subjected to two different earthquakes, selected among 9 different accelerograms, and then several different fire scenarios were considered, where the elements involved in the fire were assigned a temperature history calculated from a standard fire exposure. Times of local element failure and global collapse in case of post-earthquake fire are reported and compared with the case of fire acting on the integer structure. The results show that the fire resistance of both frames is not strongly affected by a previous earthquake, but the collapse mechanism can in some cases change in a detrimental way for firefighting operations.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Structures in Fire |
Number of pages | 8 |
Publication date | 2018 |
Publication status | Published - 2018 |
Event | 10th International Conference on Structures in Fire - Belfast, United Kingdom Duration: 6 Jun 2018 → 8 Jun 2018 Conference number: 10 |
Conference
Conference | 10th International Conference on Structures in Fire |
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Number | 10 |
Country/Territory | United Kingdom |
City | Belfast |
Period | 06/06/2018 → 08/06/2018 |
Keywords
- Post-earthquake fire
- Steel structures
- Moment resisting frame
- Parametric study