• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.207-222
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• 2010

Fire incident in buildings is common, so the fire safety design of the framed structure is imperative, especially for the unprotected or partly protected bare steel frames. However, software for structural fire analysis is not widely available. As a result, the performance-based structural fire design is urged on the basis of using user-friendly and conventional nonlinear computer analysis programs so that engineers do not need to acquire new structural analysis software for structural fire analysis and design. The tool is desired to have the capacity of simulating the different fire scenarios and associated detrimental effects efficiently, which includes second-order P-D and P-d effects and material yielding. Also the nonlinear behaviour of large-scale structure becomes complicated when under fire, and thus its simulation relies on an efficient and effective numerical analysis to cope with intricate nonlinear effects due to fire. To this end, the present fire study utilizes a second-order elastic/plastic analysis software NIDA to predict structural behaviour of bare steel framed structures at elevated temperatures. This fire study considers thermal expansion and material degradation due to heating. Degradation of material strength with increasing temperature is included by a set of temperature-stress-strain curves according to BS5950 Part 8 mainly, which implicitly allows for creep deformation. This finite element stiffness formulation of beam-column elements is derived from the fifth-order PEP element which facilitates the computer modeling by one member per element. The Newton-Raphson method is used in the nonlinear solution procedure in order to trace the nonlinear equilibrium path at specified elevated temperatures. Several numerical and experimental verifications of framed structures are presented and compared against solutions in literature. The proposed method permits engineers to adopt the performance-based structural fire analysis and design using typical second-order nonlinear structural analysis software.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.107-116
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• 2017

Fires in tunnels are an international concern and fatal accidental fires in tunnels seem to occur on annual. They have the potential to become much worse int the future as more and longer tunnels are constructed and as traffic densities increase. This is a serious problem. The main purpose of this study is to develop operational procedures for fire brigades in road tunnel fires. This study discussed the past to see what can be learned from the incidents that have already done in tunnels. 73 cases of road tunnel fires domestic and outside of Korea were investigated and classified into 4 incident categories. Among them, 4 tunnel fires are highlighted, focusing on the activities of fire brigades and operation. Regarding the establishment of the strategies for fire fighting, 6 kinds of fire scenario curves have been deducted with regard to the relation between intervention time and heat release rate. It made the choice from the defensive or aggressive fire fighting activities depending on two criteria i.e. response limit and maximum response time. Road Tunnel Classification models can be useful when a fire brigade evaluates fire risk levels in the tunnels under its jurisdiction from the firefighting point of view and sets up preventive measures.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.121-139
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• 2021

Ultra-high strength concrete (UHSC) encased steel columns are receiving growing interest in high-rise buildings owing to their economic and architectural advantages. However, UHSC encased steel columns are not covered by the modern fire safety design code. A total of 14 fire tests are conducted on UHSC (120 MPa) encased steel columns under constant axial loads and exposed to ISO-834 standard fire. The effect of load ratio, slenderness, stirrup spacing, cross-section size and concrete cover to core steel on the fire resistance and failure mode of the specimens are investigated. The applicability of the tabulated method in EC4 (EN 1994-1-2-2005) and regression formula in Chinese code (DBJ/T 15-81-2011) to fire resistance of UHSC encased steel columns are checked. Generally, the test results reveal that the vertical displacement-heating time curves can be divided into two phases, i.e. thermal expansion and shortening to failure. It is found that the fire resistance of column specimens increases with the increase of the cross-section size and concrete cover to core steel, but decreases with the increase of the load ratio and slenderness. The EC4 method overestimates the fire resistance up to 186% (220 min), while the Chinese code underestimates it down to 49%. The Chinese code has a better agreement than EC4 with the test results since the former considers the effect of the load ratio, slenderness, cross section size directly in its empirical formula. To estimate the fire resistance precisely can improve the economy of structural fire design of ultra-high strength concrete encased steel columns.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.199-213
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• 2020

This paper proposes a Global-Local Analysis Method (GLAM) to assess the progressive collapse of steel framed structures under fire-induced column failure. GLAM obtains the overall structural response by combining dynamic analysis of the heated column (local) with static analysis of the overall structure (global). Test results of two steel frames which explicitly consider the dynamic effect during fire-induced column failure were employed to validate the proposed GLAM. Results show that GLAM gives reasonable predictions to the test frames in terms of both whether to collapse and the displacement verse temperature curves. Besides, several case studies of a two-dimensional (2D) steel frame and a three-dimensional (3D) steel frame with concrete slabs were conducted by using GLAM. Results show that GLAM gives the same collapse predictions to the studied cases with nonlinear dynamic analysis of the whole structure model. Compared with nonlinear dynamic analysis of the whole structure model, GLAM saves approximately 70% and 99% CPU time for the cases of 2D and 3D steel frame, respectively. Results also show that the load level of a structure has notable effects on the restraint condition of a heated column in the structure.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.311-320
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• 2014

High strength concrete is not only vulnerable to the occurrence of spalling which generates the loss of cross-section in concrete structures but produces faster degradation in its mechanical properties than normal strength concrete in the event of fire. This study aims to evaluate fire resistance of high strength segment concrete with PET fibers mixed to prevent spalling under ISO834 (2hr) and RABT fire curve. As results, the samples without PET fibers show the concrete loss up to the depth of about 8 cm and 9.5 cm from the surface exposed to fire under ISO834 and RABT fire curve respectively. The samples mixed with PET fiber of 0.1% show no spalling under ISO834 fire curve and the spalled thickness of 6.5 cm under RABT fire curve after the fire tests. Finally, the sample mixed with PET fiber of 0.2% shows no spalling under RABT fire curve. The results indicate that the suitable amounts of PET fiber for securing fire resistance performance of this high strength segment concrete are 0.1% under ISO834 fire curve and 0.2% under RABT fire curve. However, even though spalling does not occur, it is necessary to repair the deterioration of concrete up to 4 cm from the surface exposed to fire after fire.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.267-277
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• 2017

Base-isolation is now being adopted as a retrofitting strategy to improve seismic behaviour of reinforced concrete (r.c.) framed structures subjected to far-fault earthquakes. However, the increase in deformability of a base-isolated framed building may lead to amplification in the structural response under the long-duration horizontal pulses of high-magnitude near-fault earthquakes, which can become critical once the strength level of a fire-weakened r.c. superstructure is reduced. The aim of the present work is to investigate the nonlinear seismic response of fire-damaged r.c. framed structures retrofitted by base-isolation. For this purpose, a five-storey r.c. framed building primarily designed (as fixed-base) in compliance with a former Italian seismic code for a medium-risk zone, is to be retrofitted by the insertion of elastomeric bearings to meet the requirements of the current Italian code in a high-risk seismic zone. The nonlinear seismic response of the original (fixed-base) and retrofitted (base-isolated) test structures in a no fire situation are compared with those in the event of fire in the superstructure, where parametric temperature-time curves are defined at the first level, the first two and the upper levels. A lumped plasticity model describes the inelastic behaviour of the fire-damaged r.c. frame members, while a nonlinear force-displacement law is adopted for the elastomeric bearings. The average root-mean-square deviation of the observed spectrum from the target design spectrum together with a suitable intensity measure are chosen to select and scale near- and far-fault earthquakes on the basis of the design hypotheses adopted.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.80 no.6
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• pp.701-709
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• 2021

The paper aims at improving the understanding and mitigating the effects of tunnel fires that may breakout due to the burning fuel and/or explosion within the tunnel. This study particularly focuses on the behavior of the commonly used horse shoe geometry of tunnel systems. The problem has been obtained using an adequate well-established program incorporating the Lagrangian approach. A transient-thermo-coupled static structural analysis is carried out. The effects of radiation and convection to the outer walls of the tunnel is studied. The paper also presents the impact of the hazard on the structural integrity of the tunnel. A methodology is proposed to study the tunnel fire using a model which uses equivalent steel sheet to represent the presence of reinforcements to improve the computational efficiency with adequate validation. A parametric study has been carried out and the effect of suitable lining property for mitigating the fire hazard is arrived at. Detailed analysis is done for the threshold limits of the properties of the lining material to check if it is acceptable in all aspects for the integrity of the tunnel. The study may prove useful for developing insights for ensuring tunnel fire safety. To conduct such studies experimentally are tremendously costly but are required to gain confidence. But, scaled models, as well as loading and testing conditions, cannot be studied by many trials experimentally as the cost will shoot up sharply. In this context, the results obtained from such computational studies with a feasible variation of various combinations of parameters may act as a set of guidelines to freeze the adequate combination of various parameters to conduct one or two costly experiments for confidence building.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.13-18
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• 2006

Ti-8Ta-3Nb, as a new biomaterial, was prepared by cast and swaging process. Their deformation behavior of Ti-8Ta-3Nb alloy has been characterized on the basis of its flow stress variation obtained from the true strain rate compression testing in the temperature of $700-900^{\circ}C$ and strain rate of $0.001-10\;s^{-1}$. At the strain rates lower than $0.1\;s^{-1}$ and the all temperature ranges which consist of two phase ${\alpha}+{\beta}$ as well as single ${\beta}$ phase fields, the flow curves show a small degree of flow softening behavior. In contrast, the shapes of the flow curves at other strain rates indicate unstable behavior. The shapes of the flow curves were similar in both as-cast and swaged specimen as well as in both ${\alpha}+{\beta}$ phase and ${\beta}$ phase. The flow stress data did not obey the kinetic rate equation over the entire regime of testing but a good fit has been obtained in the intermediate range of temperatures ($750-850^{\circ}C$). In this range, a stress exponent value of about 7.7 in as-cast specimens and about 6.2 in swaged specimens with an apparent activation energy of about 300 kJ/mol and about 206 kJ/mol respectively have been evaluated.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.14-18
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• 2018

The earlier studies on the fire resistance performance of woods used as building materials have focused on confirming combustion characteristics of fire retardant or flame resistant treated wood. In this paper, to confirm internal temperature changes closely related to pyrolysis of woods exposed to the flame, heating experiments were conducted in a heating furnace according to the standard heating temperature curves after Douglas-fir, which is widely used as structural materials, was treated with a flame resistant solution and flame retardant paint. As a result of the experiment, it was confirmed that the thermal diffusion inside the wood has decreased when the wood was treated with the flame resistant solution. However, in high temperature, the flame resistant effect could not be expected due to the peeling of the coating in the case of the flame resistant paint treated wood. Therefore, it can be considered that it is more effective to use the flame resistant solution which penetrates in to the inside of the wood than flame resistant paint which forms the coating on the surface of the wood in order to enhance the flame resistance effect on the thick wood.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.196-200
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• 2010

The number of railway tunnels has been increasing rapidly. Although fires in long railway tunnels are rare, the consequences can be devastating. Prior to this study, there were no adequate time-temperature curves for the fire safety assessment of Korean railway tunnels. We studied a standard foreign time-temperature curve for which the heat rate is based on the traffic and the types of vehicles. We then proposed a hydrocarbon curve as a fire design model for railway tunnels in Korea. We examined the implications of this proposed model on railway tunnel structures using numerical analysis.