Numerical investigation on the fire performance of Concrete Encased Steel composite columns with high strength materials
Please login to view abstract download link
Concrete Encased Steel (CES) composite columns exhibit excellent mechanical properties at room temperature, owing to the confining effects that the stirrups and the steel profile provide to the encased concrete. Additionally, this typology presents an inherent advantage in case of fire, related to the protection offered by the concrete mass, which delays the degradation of the inner steel profile under the thermal action. Recently, the development of high-performance materials opens a new range of possibilities for their application in composite columns with embedded steel profiles, where they can be very useful for substantially improving their fire resistance in the case of slender columns. However, the applicability of high-performance materials to CES composite columns —especially under fire conditions— remains uncertain and requires further investigation. In this work, a finite element model is developed and validated against a database of fire test results on CES composite columns available in the literature. Based on this numerical model, parametric analyses varying the concrete strength, steel strength, load ratio and column slenderness are conducted, to better understand their fire performance and promote the use of high-performance materials in CES composite columns.