Behavior of Concrete Structures Under the Action of Elevated Temperatures

Abstract

Common building structures are designed to withstand the load that may occur during building service life. There are dead load and traffic loads of different characters, such as imposed load, wind load, snow load, earthquake load etc. However, special attention must be paid to ensure a satisfactory level of resistance in the case of fire action. The particular danger of fire damage exists in urban areas where low-rise and middle-high-rise residential buildings dominate, usually built of reinforced concrete. Because of all these factors, it is very important to analyse structural fire performance. Mechanical and thermal properties of reinforced concrete as well as other building materials, such as steel and wood, decrease at elevated temperatures. As an example, in this paper we present structural fire analysis of a concrete slab implementing analytical procedures given in EN 1992-1-2. Numerical analysis is performed using both the finite element method and the finite difference method taking into account nonlinear transient heat flow.