A Case Study of Structural Fire in an Industrial Building

A Fire is not a very frequent incident in the lifetime of a structure. As a matter of fact, fire occurrences are quite rare stochastic events depending on the purpose of the building. The case study of this paper is an industrial building. Statistics indicate that industrial buildings have a relatively high ignition rate in comparison to other occupancies. First, economical available fire prevention measures are investigated and a risk analysis is conducted to derive the possibility of controlling fire in the origin. Furthermore, possibility of a total destruction is calculated. Secondly, a finite element model is produced to apply the fire conditions to an over-designed frame to establish an understanding of the behavior of a frame subjected to varying thermal gradients. Finally, temperature loads are applied to the building steel structure in addition to a couple of ’plan-wisely’ similar structures, whose frame sections are over-designed , and behavior of the structures is investigated. Incidentally, minimum design loads are in compliance with ASCE 7 and steel design is according to ANSI/AISC 360-10.

Keywords:

Steel structures , Structural fire , Industrial buildings , Fire prevention