Modelling of heated composite floor slabs

The aim of this research is to simulate the behaviour of composite steel-concrete building floors exposed to fire. The project is carried out in cooperation with the section of ''steel, timber and composite structures'' of the same institute.

Experiments undertaken on a full-scale multi-storey steel-framed building at Cardington, UK, showed that steel members in real multi-storey buildings have significantly greater fire resistance than isolated members in standard fire tests. It has also been observed that the concrete slab plays an important role in preventing structural collapse.

The object of this research project is to develop numerical methods that can predict the behaviour of such structures when subjected to fire. A specialized finite element code in C++ will be developed for modelling composite slabs in a high temperature environment with geometrical and physical non-linearities taken into account. It is planed to analyze a variety of inner fields, edge-fields and corner-fields. The outcome of this will be flow-charts and tables for the appropriate dimensioning of such slabs in practise.

Staff

Prof. Dr. Edoardo Anderheggen (Guidance)
Prof. Dr. Mario Fontana (Guidance)
Can Tesar (Assistant)