Simplified robustness assessment of steel framed structures under fire-induced column failure

Abstract

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.