Impact of a Local Fire on the Residual Seismic Displacement Capacity of the Entire Building


Abstract eng:
Most common building fires cause small damage to the structure, usually limited to the fire compartment of origin. These buildings could be reused after inspection by engineers and with a small or local repair. We investigate how the damage from a local fire (in terms of residual deformation) to the fire-exposed elements of a reinforced concrete building could impact the seismic resistance of the unexposed elements, and present a method to evaluate seismic damage and residual displacement capacity of unexposed elements. The structural interaction of the entire building is considered for a local fire limited to a fire-resistance-rated compartment. Available test data show that when a concrete column is exposed to fire, the column experiences large shortening deformation in addition to loss of load capacity. Because of the interaction with the rest of the building, the load of the column redistributes to other nearby columns and causes permanent deformation of other structural elements. Test results of a full-scale concrete building also showed that thermal expansion of a fire-exposed floor can cause damage to unexposed columns that are connected to the fire-exposed floor. Damage to the unexposed beams due to the column shortening, and to unexposed columns due to the floor thermal expansions, will result in reduction of the seismic resistance of the entire building. We used available test data, from the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) partly conducted by the author and the Building Research Establishment (BRE) of the UK, to assess damage and acceptance criteria of the ASCE 41-13 standard to determine seismic displacement capacity of the unexposed elements. The method is expected to help engineers for post-fire structural inspection, particularly in areas of high earthquake hazard, to more realistically evaluate the impact of fire damage on the residual seismic resistance of buildings.

Conference Title:
Conference Title:
16th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering
Conference Venue:
Santiago (CL)
Conference Dates:
2017-01-09 / 2017-01-13
Rights:
Text je chráněný podle autorského zákona č. 121/2000 Sb.



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 Record created 2017-01-18, last modified 2017-01-18


Original version of the author's contribution as presented on USB, paper 354.:
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