Fragility Analysis of Steel Buildings in Fire

Details

• Personal Author:
  Chicchi R ; Ngann ST
• Description:
  Motivation: Fires in buildings have long been a public safety concern for occupants and first-responders. The World Trade Center building collapses on September 11, 2001 motivated a focus on understanding structural behavior in fires. This work will help to better understand building behavior to fire, thereby minimizing damage and prolonging the time of collapse in order to permit occupants and first-responders to safely exit the building. This project aims to provide recommendations and guidance on performance-based fire analysis that can be implemented in the design industry. Background: Structural engineers in the United States do not currently design structures to withstand fire loads. The amount of fireproofing on a structure and the fire rating of the structure is based on furnace testing of select components and assemblies by testing agencies such as Underwriter's Laboratory. A performance-based approach for analyzing structures subjected to fires has been developed, which considers not only the time of failure but also the extent of damage. Instead of relying on empirical data from testing that may not translate well into building behavior, system behavior can be evaluated using finite element method (FEM) modeling. This approach, however, tends to considers one design-basis fire and does not adequately consider the possible variability in fire loading. Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA) is a procedure used to create parametric analyses of building behavior to seismic loads through modeling. Earthquakes are scaled by an intensity measure (i.e. - peak ground acceleration or spectral acceleration) and the damage parameter (i.e. - story drift ratio) is recorded at each intensity level. This research will apply the IDA approach to fire through Incremental Fire Analysis (IFA) and providing recommendations for effective intensity measures and damage parameters for overall building behavior. Expected Results: Primary focus will be on the fire response of gravity columns, as this is the anticipated initiating failure mode. The internal temperatures of the columns will be evaluated to generate fragility curves that capture probability of failure (i.e. - column buckling load) at different fire intensities. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Fires Occupational Health Safety
• Keywords:
  Fire Hazards Structural Analysis Structural Design Structural Engineering
• Publisher:
  University of Cincinnati
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Abstract or Summary
• Place as Subject:
  Ohio ; OSHA Region 5
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  1
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20054905
• Citation:
  19th Annual Pilot Research Project Symposium, University of Cincinnati Education and Research Center, October 11-12, 2018, Cincinnati, Ohio. Cincinnati, OH: University of Cincinnati, 2018 Oct; :1
• Email:
  uebelcm@mail.edu
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2019
• Performing Organization:
  University of Cincinnati
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Start Date:
  20050701
• Source Full Name:
  19th Annual Pilot Research Project Symposium, University of Cincinnati Education and Research Center, October 11-12, 2018, Cincinnati, Ohio
• End Date:
  20260630
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:2d64e3f993f24a4eb3125aa687143051758d2fac652e7704af0503812953bc10282072f07dc983f215649dcf41a2caad78e21c20f688fbb5cd4e434353a914f8
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/217317/cdc_217317_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 308.27 KB ]