Modeling the Temperature Development on Foamed Concrete Filled Steel Hollow Section Column

Abstract

Fire is one of the harsh environmental hazards that affect structures. Structural fire design is very crucial in the design of steel structures. Temperature distribution within the structural member is the first stage for the structural fire design available in EN1993-1-2 and EN1994-1-2; it is used for the determination of stresses on the structure under fire. Finite element analysis for the temperature development was carried out on Foamed concrete filled hollow section (FCFHS) columns using ABAQUS package, sensitivity analysis was performed to determine the value of gap thermal conductance between steel and foamed concrete that depict the best prediction of the temperature distributions. The Finite Element results were validated against the experimental results; a reasonable agreement was observed between numerical and experimental temperature results. A gap thermal conductance of 200 W/m2K was found suitable for predicting temperature distribution on the foamed concrete-filled hollow section columns.