Finite element modeling for the progressive collapse analysis of steel stiffened-plate structures in fires
Introduction
Steel stiffened-plate panels are used in naval, offshore, mechanical and civil engineering structures as primary strength structures. They are rarely subjected to fire accidents, which may result in structural collapse leading to casualty or severe damages to asset and the environment.
Fire safety engineering is a key design consideration for structures on land and at sea [3,4]. In ships and offshore structures, hydrocarbon fires usually stem from oil and gas leaks with ignition [[4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12]]. The authors contributed to the fire-induced progressive collapse testing of full-scale steel stiffened-plate structures under lateral patch loading [1,2]. Many useful studies are found in the literature in association with the fire-induced progressive collapse analysis of land-based structures which are rather portal frames than plated structures [[13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30]]. Lou et al. [13] performed fire tests on full-scale steel portal frames associated with progressive collapse. Passive fire protection (PFP) is recognised as an effective option to protect structures in fires [4,[31], [32], [33], [34], [35], [36], [37], [38], [39], [40],48,49]. Fire safety engineering requires quantification of how much PFP contributes to delaying the structural collapse so that a greater period of time can be attained in the process of escape and evacuation.
In the earlier articles [1,2], the authors obtained the test data on the progressive collapse of full-scale steel stiffened plate structures without or with PFP under lateral patch loading in fires. The present paper is a sequel to these earlier articles. In this paper, computational models were developed using transient thermal elastic-plastic large-deformation finite element method. The computational model to analyse heat transfer from ambient temperature to steel temperature was developed for steel plated structures without or with PFP. The computational model for the analysis of the fire-induced progressive collapse behaviour without or with PFP was formulated at the elevated temperature. The computational models were validated by a comparison with the test data.
Section snippets
Computational models
The procedure for the quantitative fire risk assessment and management of structures and infrastructures [4] requires the fire-induced progressive collapse analysis [41] for identifying the fire consequences. Key tasks to analyse the fire-induced progressive collapse behaviour are: heat transfer analysis to define temperature in steel transferred from ambient temperature elevated due to fire, and thermal elastic-plastic large-deformation analysis to identify the progressive collapse behaviour.
Application of the computational models to the tested structures
The computational models presented in section 2 were applied to the fire-induced progressive collapse testing on full-scale steel stiffened plate structures without or with PFP under lateral patch loading. In the testing, the horizontal type fire test furnace in the ICASS/KOSORI in Hadong, South Korea (www.icass.certer) was used, as shown in Fig. 7(a). Gas burners were used to increase the temperature inside the furnace. The loading actuators were used to apply external forces during fire
Computational results and discussion
Fig. 15 compares the temperature history of the tested structure without PFP, obtained from the test [1] and predicated using the LS-DYNA heat transfer analysis. The temperature of the structure calculated through heat transfer analysis is very well matched with the temperature measured in the test. After 2720 s the heat system was shut down in the test, but in the computational model, the temperature of the structure was continued to observe without reducing the heat loads. The temperature of
Concluding remarks
The objective of the present study was to establish a procedure for the nonlinear computations of the fire-induced progressive collapse behavior for steel stiffened-plate structures without or with passive fire protection (PFP). Nonlinear finite element method computational modelling techniques for both the heat transfer analysis and the thermal elastic-plastic large-deformation analysis were developed, and they were validated with a comparison with the experimental data which was obtained from
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
The present study was conducted at the Korea Ship and Offshore Research Institute (International Centre for Advanced Safety Studies) at Pusan National University in South Korea which has been a Lloyd's Register Foundation Research Centre of Excellence since 2008.
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