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Engineering Structures
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/engstruct
Universit Paris-Est, Centre Scientifique et Technique du Btiment (CSTB), 84 avenue Jean Jaurs, Champs-sur-Marne, 77447 Marne-la-Valle Cedex 2, France
Universit Paris-Est, Laboratoire Navier (Ecole des Ponts ParisTech, IFSTTAR, CNRS UMR 8205), 6-8 avenue Blaise Pascal, Cit Descartes, Champs-sur-Marne, 77455
Marne-la-Valle Cedex 2, France
b
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 6 June 2014
Revised 13 January 2015
Accepted 14 January 2015
Available online 11 February 2015
Keywords:
High rise walls
Reinforced concrete
Fire loading
Yield design approach
a b s t r a c t
Relying on a simplified one dimensional beam-like schematization of the problem, a yield design-based
approach is developed for analyzing the potential failure of high rise walls (that are larger than the
dimensions of experimental test furnaces) under fire conditions. The implementation of the method combines two original features: first, the preliminary determination of interaction diagrams reflecting the
local decrease in strength of the wall due to thermal loading; second, the thermal-induced geometry
changes which are explicitly accounted for in the overall failure design of the wall. Application of the
approach is illustrated in either evaluating the fire resistance of a wall of given height or predicting
the maximum height that the wall could reach for a prescribed fire exposure time. First results of this
analysis point to the conclusion that wall failure due to fire loading is highly sensitive to its height.
! 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Assessing the ultimate load bearing performance of reinforced
concrete members subjected to fire exposure, and devising
appropriate design methods, have been the subject of an increasing
number of contributions in the last decades (see among many
others Lie and Celikkol [1], Lie and Irwin [2], Dotreppe et al. [3],
Franssen and Dotreppe [4] or El Fitiany and Youssef [5]). Quite
recently, attention has been more specifically focused on the determination of axial force-bending moment interaction diagrams of a
reinforced concrete section subjected to a fire induced temperature
gradient (Caldas et al. [6], Law and Gillie [7]). The yield design
approach in particular and its related lower and upper bound
methods (Chen [9], Salenon [10]) have proved to be a suitable
framework for determining such interaction diagrams in a rigorous
way, either under ambient temperature (Averbuch [11], Koechlin
and Potapov [12]), or when subjected to a temperature gradient
(Pham et al. [13]).
Increasingly involved in the construction of tall industrial buildings, high rise concrete walls are large size reinforced concrete
structures for which the evaluation of the fire resistance requires
a more sophisticated approach than for conventional, i.e. smaller
Corresponding author. Tel.: +33 1 61 44 81 89, +33 6 09 26 01 38; fax: +33 1 64
68 85 23.
E-mail
addresses:
phamductoanvn@yahoo.com,
ductoan.pham@cstb.fr
(D.T. Pham).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.engstruct.2015.01.022
0141-0296/! 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
154
resulting from such a thermal loading will depend on the thickness-coordinate only.
Fig. 1 provides a first insight into the basic mechanism which
may explain why failure of a high rise wall under fire loading
may occur. In its initial configuration, that is prior to fire loading,
the wall is a straight vertical beam subjected to its own vertical
weight, resulting in a linearly increasing distribution of axial compressive force N along the wall (Fig. 1(a)). The wall is generally
designed so as to avoid any buckling phenomenon, while the maximum compressive force at its base remains far below the compressive strength of the reinforced concrete section. As it will be
explained later on in more details, the transverse gradient of temperature due to fire exposure on one side of the wall will induce a
uniform thermal curvature of the beam and, as a direct consequence, out of plane transversal displacements will appear, leading
to a deformed configuration of the wall (Fig. 1(b)). Under such conditions, simple equilibrium considerations imply that any wall
cross section is subjected to a significant bending moment M in
addition to the already existing axial compressive force N.
Apart from this first decisive phenomenon which could be
attributed to an overall structural change of geometry (second
order effect), experimental evidence clearly shows that the severe
temperature increases associated with fire exposure, lead to an
important degradation of the stiffness as well as strength properties of the reinforced concrete materials, namely plain concrete
and steel reinforcements. It is the combined effect of these two
phenomena (change of geometry on the one hand, decay of the
material properties on the other hand) which may trigger the overall failure of the high rise wall.
The calculation and design procedure proposed and developed
in this paper is derived from the implementation of the above considerations and their formulations in a rigorous and mechanically
consistent framework. The analysis is performed in three main successive steps.
! Step n" 1. Determination of the wall deformed configuration and
generalized stress distribution. This step consists first in evaluating the equilibrium configuration of the wall under the combined action of thermal gradient and self-weight, then in
calculating the resulting local solicitations (axial force and
bending moment) in each section.
! Step n" 2. Determination of temperature dependent interaction
diagrams. The objective of this phase, which is completely
independent from the first one, is to determine the axial forcebending moment yield strength capacities of any wall crosssection as a function of the prescribed temperature gradient.
! Step n" 3. Yield analysis and design of the wall in its deformed
configuration determined in step n"1, on account of its reduced
strength properties evaluated in step n"2.
The whole calculation procedure is sketched in Fig. 2.
3. Step n" 1. Thermal-induced equilibrium configuration
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of a high rise wall subjected to fire loading: (a) initial and
(b) deformed configurations.
155
Equilibrium
deformed
configura!on
Reduced
interac!on
diagrams
(N, M)
distribu!ons
ex; y eh x ' vh xy
Step n2
Step n1
Thermal
curvature
Step n3
!
"
rc ' r0c x; y Ec hy eh x ' vh xy ' eth
c y
Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of thermal and equilibrium deformed shapes of the wall
under fire loading.
Note that the high rise wall is not subjected to any other prescribed load than its self-weight, which means in particular that no
load is applied on its top. Consequently, assuming that the rotation
at any point of the deformed beam remains small enough, that is:
Nx wx ' H
Upon heating, the side of the wall exposed to fire and thus to
temperature increase tends to expand much more than its unexposed side, resulting in a global curvature of the wall which will
be first calculated as a function of the temperature increase across
the wall thickness h(y), 'h 6 y6+h, and the associated thermal
strain distribution eth(y) (see red1 dashed line in Fig. 4) equal to:
eth y ayhy
'h
'
For interpretation of color in Figs. 4, 12 and 13 the reader is referred to the web
version of this article.
'h
yrc ' r
X
ns ' n0s nk 0;
k
0
c ydy
'
X
nk ns ' n0s nk 0
k
Introducing Eqs. (5) and (6) into Eqs. (7) leads to the following
solution:
eh
CD ' BE
AC ' B2
and
vh
BD ' AE
AC ' B2
A
B
C
D
E
'h
h
'h
'h
'h
h
'h
Ec hydy
X
Es hnk Ak ;
k
X
yEc hydy
nk Es hnk Ak ;
k
X 2
y Ec hydy
nk Es hnk Ak ;
2
Ec hyeth
c ydy
X
Es hnk eth
s nk Ak ;
k
X
yEc hyeth
nk Es hnk eth
c ydy
s nk Ak
k
156
Fig. 4. Strain and stress distributions in a reinforced concrete wall section due to the application of a fire-induced temperature gradient.
or on account of (11):
Mh x
0.8
Concrete
0.6
Steel
0.2
300
600
Temperature (C)
900
1200
It follows that the thermal deformed shape of the wall is characterized by the out-of-plane displacement uh(x) such that:
2
d uh
vh
dx2
10
vh
2
xx ' H
1
xx ' H
2qh
11
14
'h
Drc ydy
'
uh x
13
In order to calculate the additional bending deformations associated with this moment distribution, the same kind of reasoning
as that previously used for evaluating the thermal-induced deformations of the wall will be performed. Denoting by DN(x) and
DM(x) the increments of solicitations applied to any section of
the wall located at point x, and by De(x) and Dv(x) the corresponding elastic response in terms of mid-plane axial strain and curvature increments at this same section, we can write the following
constitutive relations similar to (5) and (6):
0.4
w
xH ' x5H ' 4x
12qh
h
'h
X
k
Dns nk DN;
X
nk Dns nk DM
15
&%
16
DN
DM
&
'B
'B C
De
Dv
&
Dvx
where
d
Mh x
Dux+
EIh
dx2
17
EIh C ' B2 =A
18
the wall section flexural stiffness under pure bending. Relations (9)
show that in the particular case of a homogeneous concrete section
reinforced by two symmetrically placed steel bars (y = n) at ambient temperature, B = 0 and the expression of this coefficient simplifies to:
EIh20, C
#
$
Z
Z H
x'H H
M h x w
uh sds
uh s ' uh x+ds
H
0
x
12
h
C2
Ec n2 As Es
3
19
157
u1 x uh x Dux
20
12
with:
Dux
h
i
w
xx ' H 12x3 ' 33Hx2 17H2 x ' H
720qh EIh
Height (m)
M 1 x M h x
w2
xx ' H20x4 ' 76Hx3 89H2 x2 ' 11H3 x ' 28H4 +
1440qh EIh
22
24
n!1
26
d
ux ' uh x+
dx2
0.6
0.8
1.2
10
u (x)
u(x)
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.2
Displacement (m)
Fig. 7. Initial thermal-induced and final equilibrated deformed configurations of a
wall as a function of height.
#
$
Z
Z H
x'H H
Mx w
usds
us ' ux+ds
H
0
x
0.4
12
25
0.2
Height (m)
u2 x u3 x ux lim un x
Displacement (m)
Mx EIh
u1 (x)
23
u (x)
d
u2 x ' uh x+
dx2
The same iterative procedure can be applied once again by solving the second order differential equation:
M 1 x EIh
u2(x) u 3 (x )
10
21
27
d
w
d
ux
H ' x ux c
EIh
dx
dx3
28
158
12
10
Height (m)
6
Fig. 9. Auxiliary yield design problem: reinforced concrete wall section subjected to
the combined action of axial force and bending moment.
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.2
Displacement (m)
Fig. 8. Comparison of predictions from iterative, analytical and numerical methods
on the problem of the stability of a high rise wall under combined self-weight and
thermal loading.
W e U Nd_ M a_
29
f t y kt hyf t ;
f c y kc hyf c
30
n0 nk ks hnk f y Ak
31
159
Fig. 10. Stress profiles in the wall cross-section used in the lower bound static approach of yield design.
160
0.12
0.06
90 min
60 min
0 min
M (MNm/m)
120 min
-0.06
Fig. 11. Principle of the stability analysis of the wall in its deformed configuration.
! Two symmetrically placed layers of 10 hot rolled steel reinforcing bars of diameter 6 mm with 3 cm of concrete cover at top
and bottom: fy = 500 MPa.
! Material properties are considered to be temperature dependent according to experimental curves provided by Eurocode
2-Part 1-2 [18].
! Constant vertical self-weight density of w = 3.5 kN/m.
A preliminary heat transfer analysis, aimed at evaluating the
temperature increase distribution across the wall thickness, should
be first conducted. Fig. 12 displays the temperature profiles across
the wall thickness obtained for instance by the SAFIR computer program [22], corresponding to 0, 60, 90 and 120 min fire durations.
Introducing these thermal gradients into the step n"2 calculation procedure presented in Section 4, the corresponding interaction diagrams could be determined as shown in Fig. 13. It thus
clearly appears from the latter figure, that temperature increase
affects the strength properties of the reinforced concrete section,
in the form of a quite significant reduction of the strength domain.
The fire loading leads to an increase of temperature (Fig. 12),
resulting in a decrease of material strength parameters associated
with a shrinkage of the interaction diagram (Fig. 13), and thus to
a much smaller global resistance of the reinforced concrete wall.
Focussing on a given fire exposure, say 120 min, for which the
interaction diagram (represented by the closed red curves of
Figs. 12 and 13) remains constant, our objective will be first to
determine from which height failure of the wall will occur.
-5.5
-3.5
-1.5
-0.12
0.5
N (MN/m)
Fig. 13. Evolution of the interaction diagrams as a function of fire exposure.
15
0.09
0.03
120 min
12m
0.03
10m
90 min
60 min
6m
0 min
0
600
(C)
900
1200
Fig. 12. Calculated temperature profiles across the wall thickness for different fire
exposures.
-4
-0.03
-0.05
300
0.06
M (MNm)
Thickness (cm)
12
0
-3
-2
-1
-0.06
N (MN)
Fig. 14. Yield design analysis of walls of different heights exposed to a given fire
exposure of 120 min.
60 min
0.04
90 min
0.03
120 min
M (MNm)
0.02
0.01
-0.06
wH
0
-0.04
-0.02
N (MN)
Fig. 15. Yield design-based analysis of a 13 m-high wall.
161