Research Priorities for Maintaining Structural Fire Resistance after Seismic Damage

Abstract eng:
This paper will systematically outline and prioritise the research needed to develop this important and hitherto neglected area. Fires are a relatively likely event consequent to earthquakes in urban locations and in general are an integral part of the emergency response strategies focussed on life safety in most developed economies. Similarly building regulations in most countries require engineers to consider the effect of seismic and fire loading on the structures and provide an adequate level of resistance to these hazards, however only on a separate basis. To the authors knowledge there are no current regulations that require buildings to consider these hazards in a sequential manner to quantify the compound loading and design for the required resistance. It is accepted that in many cases this may not be feasible or even desirable, but on the other hand there will be many high value structures where it would be economically and technically sensible to provide such resistance. This paper will focus on the research needs for developing consistent methodologies for addressing this issue from a structural engineering perspective. The nature of the compound hazard will be analysed first and the research effort required to adequately quantify the risk posed by this hazard will be discussed. The second part of the paper will deal with the research required for identifying possible strategies for managing the risk, which may or may not involve developing new analysis and design procedures.

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