COMPARISON OF RESULTANT STEEL TEMPERATURES USING TRAVELLING FIRES AND TRADITIONAL METHODS: CASE STUDY FOR THE INFORMATICS FORUM BUILDING

摘要

This paper calculates the steel temperatures resulting from a novel methodology based ontravelling fires to determine the design fire of large enclosures that are outside the range ofapplicability of current design methods. The methodology is applied to The Informatics Forum, amodern building in the city of Edinburgh finished in 2008 and which is seemed representative ofcomplex, modern architectural trends and with large enclosures. Analysis of three different steelbeams, protected and unprotected, and the results compared to those from traditional design methods(standard and parametric fire curves). The results indicate that more severe conditions are predictedfor small travelling fires of size 5 to 10% of the floor plate than for uniform fires assumed intraditional methods. Compared to the parametric fire curve, travelling fires lead up to 95% highersteel temperatures for unprotected steel, and up to 110% for protected with 39mm-gypsum.Traditional methods are more conservative only when compared to travelling fires larger than 85% ofthe floor plate.