BEHAVIOR OF REINFORCED CONCRETE COLUMNS OF BUILDINGS EXPOSED TO A REAL FIRE, PART I

Structural fire design is concerned mainly with the avoidance of structural failure or damage so that the fires are to be controlled at an initial stage. The present paper is aimed at investigating the structural behavior in bending of reinforced concrete columns RFC in an enclosure exposed to real ventilation controlled fires, i.e. fires with a heating and a cooling phase and presents methods for determining the fire resistance of RFCs exposed to a real fire. The results show that the prolonged heating of the reinforcing steel may cause to failure in the cooling phase of the fire. Beside in a separte research work boundary fire loads of reinforced concrete columns for an enclosure are determined beyond which no failure can be expected or fire resistance is much greater than ISO834 in case of a real fire (s. Ref. Part II)