Development of Hybrid Fire Simulation Methods and Their Applications to Column Fire Tests

The design philosophy in structural fire design has been shifting from prescriptive design toward performance-based design. The hybrid fire simulation method, where a physical element and a numerical model are integrated, can be used to combine the benefits of the element-level fire test and system-level fire analysis. Although the development of the hybrid fire simulation method started in the late 1990s, a fully automated robust method for large-scale numerical-experimental hybrid fire simulation has not been developed yet. In this study, two hybrid fire simulation methods are proposed and validated through full-scale column tests. The simulation schemes, substructuring methods, and stability issues are discussed in detail in this thesis. A steel moment frame was selected as a reference structure for the validation tests. The proposed methods were applied for parametric studies of steel columns and reinforced concrete columns to investigate the effect of load ratio and the axial constraint ratio on the performance of columns at elevated temperatures. The proposed method is also applied to a scaled steel braced frame that was subjected to fire following an earthquake. A set of temperature- and constraint-dependent demand-capacity curves was proposed for steel columns. The proposed curves were validated through hybrid fire simulations of steel columns. The results of the fire tests in this study demonstrate the importance of considering a realistic boundary condition for evaluating the fire performance of columns. The proposed methods provide a novel way to investigate structural fire performance through large-scale numerical-experimental hybrid fire simulations.

Department dc:contributor.department

Civil Engineering

Year dc:date.issued

2021

Author dc:creator

• Wang, Xuguang

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Kwon, Oh-Sung

• Fire performance
• Fire simulation
• Hybrid simulation
• Large-scale fire test
• Structural fire design

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1807/106319

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/106319