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Procedia Engineering 166 (2016) 13 – 18

2nd International Symposium on Submerged Floating Tunnels and Underwater Tunnel Structures

Fire Resistance Study of Concrete in the Application of Tunnel-Like

Structures
Xu Longa*, Hongcun Guoa
a
School of Mechanics, Civil Engineering and Architecture, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China

Abstract

For submerged floating tunnels and other underwater structures with a confine space, fire is an unavoidable and critical issue. In
the existing designs, concrete has been widely employed to increase the strength or function as ballast to stabilize the structures
due to hydrodynamic loadings, such as wave and current. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that concrete owns its merits to protect
structures from fire, even though there are still a number of technical and scientific problems to tackle. In this paper, the
mechanical behaviour of concrete is studied under high temperature in fire. Later, numerical simulations are performed so as to
attain quantitative results in applications of tunnel-like structures. Particularly, some structural parameters are investigated in
terms of fire resistance, i.e., compressive strength of concrete, yield strength of steel and the length of SFT. The effects of these
parameters on the fire resistance time of SFT that were exposed to an RABT fire curve are discussed to illustrate the importance
to optimize the values within a reasonable range.
2016The
© 2016 TheAuthors.
Authors. Published
Published by Elsevier
by Elsevier Ltd. Ltd.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of SUFTUS-2016.
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of SUFTUS-2016
Keywords: Fire resistance; concrete; protection; numerical simulation; tunnel;

1. Introduction

Submerged floating tunnel (SFT), also named Archimedes Bridge, is a novel kind of traffic solution for waterway
crossings. Compared with traditional bridges and tunnels, the cost of SFT is proportional to the length of the tunnel,
while the construction cost of suspension bridge grows exponentially with increasing length and SFT owns a small
road slope compared with the underground tunnel, which is more energy efficient and, therefore, causes less air
pollution of traffics [1]. For SFT and other structures with a confine space, fire is an unavoidable and critical issue,
and should be considered very carefully.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +86-029-8849 3027.

E-mail address: xulong@nwpu.edu.cn

1877-7058 © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of SUFTUS-2016
doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2016.11.531
14 Xu Long and Hongcun Guo / Procedia Engineering 166 (2016) 13 – 18

The main dangers in fire are identified as gas and smoke production, with even low concentrations of carbon
monoxide being highly toxic. Quite a number of fire accidents have resulted in substantial damages economically
and also cause casualties, such as the Gotthard tunnel fire of 2001 and the Caldecott Tunnel fire of 1982. Compared
with normal tunnels, SFT is more vulnerable due to the underwater condition and the fire accident may lead to more
disastrously loss. On the other hand, the safety of SFT from the structure point of view is also important as the
evacuation of people depends on the structural capacity and performance after fire attack. In the present study, the
fire resistance of a typical SFT structure is numerically investigated and some important material/structural
parameters are studied to give an insight into their fire resistance effects. The RABT fire curve [2] is usually
employed as the fire load applied on the structural components in many previous researches.

2. Finite element model

In this paper, a three-dimensional coupled thermal-stress FE analysis model was developed in Fig. 1.(a) based on
the details of a submerged floating tunnel prototype (SFTP) with the tube length of 100 m [1]. Firstly, a heat transfer
analysis sub-model was conducted to obtain the temperature field of submerged floating tunnel (SFT) under the
RABT fire condition. Then, a three-dimensional stress analysis model was established, and the coupled temperature
field was imported into the stress analysis model as a temperature predefined field. In both analysis models with the
identical nodal information, the type of elements should belong to the same element families. Namely, the 3D solid
elements for thermal and structural analyses were DC3D8 and C3D8, respectively. A mesh size of 0.5 m was
applied to discretize the finite element model.

(a) (b)

Fig. 1. FE analysis model of the SFTP tube: (a) details of cross-section; (b) load applied on the tube outside.

In order to simulate the temperature field of SFT under the RABT fire conditions, an amplitude function
represented the ambient temperature T0 is applied on the inner wall of SFT. The temperature T versus time t
relationship of RABT fire curve is given by [2]. In the first 5 minutes, the temperature rises to 1200°C rapidly; then
the temperature stops rising and maintains the state until the next 2 hours. Later on, the temperature falls down
slowly. Additionally, for simulating the wave and current that loaded on SFT, a uniform distributed load shown in
Fig. 1.(b) is applied on the outer face of SFT.
It is well known that SFT structure consists of a number of SFT tubes depending on the total length of the tunnel.
For simplification of boundary condition, one SFT tube will experience a rigid-body motion with the adjacent tubes,
and deform at the same time to a certain extent. In the present finite element model, only one SFT tube is selected to
be analyzed. In fact, one end of the SFT tube is assumed to fixed, while the other one is pinned to simulate a
conservative condition of one SFT tube in a sufficiently long SFT structure.

2.1. Material property

For both concrete and steel, the thermal properties models proposed by Lie et al. [3] were used in the thermal
analysis. In the stress analysis, the concrete damaged plasticity model in ABAQUS [4] was used for concrete
elements. This model assumed two failure mechanisms, namely tensile cracking and compressive crushing. A
 Xu Long and Hongcun Guo / Procedia Engineering 166 (2016) 13 – 18 15

modified Drucker-Prager yield surface with a non-associated flow rule was used to define the plastic flow. The
stress-strain relationship model of concrete at fire conditions proposed by Han et al. [5, 6] was employed. For the
steel, a classic mental material model with a Von Mises yield surface and an associated plastic flow rule was chosen.
The stress-strain relationship of steel at elevated temperatures proposed by Lie et al. [3, 7, 8] was adopted. Constant
expansion coefficients recommended by Hong and Varma [9] for both concrete and steel were adopted. The values
were 6×10-6/°C and 12×10-6/°C, respectively.

2.2. Thermal analysis

Thermal analysis is conducted aiming to obtain the temperature filed of SFT under the RABT fire conditions.
Heat is transferred from the fire to the inner steel surfaces by radiation and convection.
A constant convective coefficient of 25W/(m2K) and a resultant emissivity of 0.5 recommended by Eurocode 4
[10] were used for the exposed sides. The Stefan-Boltzmann constant is 5.67×10-8W/(m2K2). No heat loss was
assumed at the interaction surface between steel and concrete. The temperature of sea water is assumed to be 20°C.
The result of thermal analysis is shown in Fig. 2, in which the temperature of steel tube elevates faster than that
of concrete. These points are located on the cross-section exactly in the mid-span of SFT tube. As a result, the
material property of steel decreases very quickly while the concrete maintain material property as good as ambient
temperature.

Fig. 2. Temperature of SFT tube under the RABT fire curve.

2.3. Stress analysis

Both of the steel and concrete were modelled with 3D solid elements C3D8, and meshes of the stress analysis
models were the same with those of thermal analysis model in order to map the temperature field accurately. In
order to simulate the actual conditions, the normal behaviour of interaction surface between concrete and steel was
defined as ‘hard contact’ and the tangential direction behaviour was defined as a penalty friction with a coefficient
of 0.35 [11, 12]. To simulate the load of wave and current, a uniformly linear distributed load of 100kN/m was
applied to outside of SFT. The boundary conditions were generally defined as fixed-pinned to simulate one tube of
the SFT of interest.

3. Failure mechanism

The failure response of the FE model is predicted in Fig. 3, where the two points are located on concrete and steel,
respectively. The longitudinal stress ratio is defined as f33/fc or f33/fy, which represents the ratio of normal stress
along the longitudinal direction to the compressive strength of steel tube or concrete at the ambient temperature.
At first, the stress ratio in steel tube equals to 0.48 which is greater than that the value of 0.38 in concrete. It can
be explained that steel tube has higher stiffness than concrete and thus resists the hydrodynamic load much more.
16 Xu Long and Hongcun Guo / Procedia Engineering 166 (2016) 13 – 18

Subsequently, as the Young’s modulus of steel is much larger than that of concrete, the longitudinal stress ratio of
steel tube increases to a peak value of 0.80 in the next few minutes, which means that more loading was resisted by
the steel tube. In the next 20 mins, due to the deterioration of material property, steel tube commences to yield
slowly, and consequently the stress ratio of steel falls down.
For concrete layer, the temperature keeps lower than 70°C throughout the deformation process as the exterior
cover shares a constant temperature with sea water, hence the material property of concrete maintains as good as
that at ambient temperature. Based on the force equilibrium between concrete and stress, the stress ratio of concrete
decreased slowly in the first several minutes due to the growth of the stress ratio in steel. However, when the stress
ratio of steel starts to decrease after about the 7 minutes in fire conditions, the temperature of steel tube is
sufficiently high according to the RABT fire curve to cause the thermal expansion of steel tube more significant.
This thermal expansion in steel tube delays the compressive deformation in concrete and also the growth of stress
ratio in concrete as illustrated by the dashed duration in Fig. 3. The thermal stress in steel tube will compensate to
satisfy the force equilibrium instead. On the other hand, when the flexural deflection of the SFT tube keeps
increasing and becomes sufficiently high to overcome the thermal expansion effect, the growth of compressive
deformation in concrete will dominate, hence the stress ratio in concrete starts to increase only after 11 minutes in
fire. This is the reason why the increasing of stress ratio in concrete is much later than the decreasing of stress ratio
in steel tube. Since then, the load is slowly transferred to concrete layer from steel tube, and the stress ratio in
concrete increases. At the final stage, the stress ratio of concrete increases quickly to the value of 0.70 with an
excessive displacement to indicate the final failure of the SFT structure. In terms of failure mode, the failure of SFT
tube is essentially caused by elevated temperature, while concrete is crushed due to excessive flexural deflection
when steel tube is too soft. Eventually, both concrete layer and steel tube fail together.

1.0

Steel
Concrete
0.8
Stress ratio

0.6

0.4

Concrete
0.2
Wave load

Steel
Delayed duration
0.0
0 10 20 30
Time (min)

Fig. 3. Failure mechanism of SFT tube.

4. Parametric Study

A parametric study was performed to investigate the influence of length of SFT (L), compressive strength of
concrete (fc), yield strength of steel (fy) on the fire resistance time of SFT that were exposed to an RABT fire
condition. All the models were subjected to a 100kN/m uniform distribute load.
Fig. 4.(a) shows the effect of compressive strength of concrete to fire resistance time of SFT exposed to the
standard fire heating. All the models own the same length (100 m), but different in concrete compressive strength,
and steel strength ranged from Q234 to Q420. Note that compressive strength of concrete has a significant impact on
the fire resistance time of SFT tubes so that the fire resistance time increased with the increase of concrete
compressive strength.
 Xu Long and Hongcun Guo / Procedia Engineering 166 (2016) 13 – 18 17

40 40

30 30
Time (min)

Time (min)
20 20
Q235
Q345 C30
Q390 C40
Q420 C50

10 10
30 35 40 45 50 200 250 300 350 400 450
Concrete strength (MPa) Steel strength (MPa)
(a) (b)

Fig. 4. Effects of material strength: (a) effect of compressive strength of concrete; (b) effect of yield strength of steel.

The effect of steel strength on the fire resistance of SFT is shown in Fig. 4.(b). All the models have the same
length (100 m), concrete compressive strength ranged from C30 to C50, and the steel strength ranged from Q235 to
Q420. Similarly with the effect of concrete compressive strength, the fire resistance time increased with the increase
of steel strength. Both of the material properties of concrete and steel decrease with elevating the temperature, thus
the material with greater strength can maintain more capacity after fire.
Fig. 5 shows the effect of length of concrete (L) to fire resistance time of SFT exposed to the standard fire heating
which lasted 120mins totally. The length of models range from 50m to 100m, concrete compressive strength ranged
from C30 to C50, and all the models have the same steel strength (235 MPa). Note that the length of SFT has an
obvious influence on the fire resistance of SFT under fire, and the shorter SFT will obtain a large stiffness, which
has a better fire resistance time under the RABT fire curve.
140
70

120 60

100 50
Stress (MPa)
Time (min)

80 40

60 30
Point
40 20 Length=50m
C30 Length=100m
C40 Length=125m
20 10
C50 Length=150m
Length=200m
0 0
50 60 70 80 90 100 0.0 2.5 5.0 7.5 10.0 12.5 15.0
Length (m) Displacement (m)

Fig. 5. Effect of the SFT tube length. Fig. 6. Response of SFT tubes with greater lengths.

In order to examine the possibility of longer SFT tube in the present study, three finite element models for SFT
tubes with more than 100 m are built and computed. Fig. 6 shows the relationship of SFT’s response in terms of the
relationship between displacement and stress at a certain point of the cross section at the mid-span of the SFT tubes
with different lengths ranging from 50 m to 200 m. For material, the compressive strength of concrete is 40 MPa,
while the steel strength is 235 MPa. Note that the length of SFT has an obvious influence on the stress behaviour of
SFT under fire conditions, and the shorter SFT will obtain a smaller peak stress, which is actually beneficial to the
fire resistance of SFT tube under the RABT fire curve. For the SFT tube longer than 100m, the stress at the point of
18 Xu Long and Hongcun Guo / Procedia Engineering 166 (2016) 13 – 18

interest as shown in Fig. 6 increase too fast and lead to failure when the fire condition is applied. For example, the
SFT tube with a length of 125 m can resist the combined fire and hydrodynamic load for about 80 seconds, and
much shorter duration can be held by SFT tubes with the lengths of 150 m and 200 m. Thus, the length of 100 m for
one SFT tube is reasonable.

4. Conclusion

In this paper, a 3D FE model was developed to simulate the temperature field and stress field of submerged
floating tunnels (SFT) subjected to RABT fire curve. In order to investigate the influence of some key terms, a
parametric study focusing on length of SFT (L), concrete strength (fc), steel strength (fy). The following conclusions
can be drawn based on the studies:
(1) The 3D FE model established in this paper has been adopted by many other researchers in different fields, and
can provide a prediction of the fire resistance of submerged floating tunnels. To a certain extent of accuracy, this
approach can be used to save the costs of experiments.
(2) The parametric study focuses on different key parameters which may greatly influence the fire resistance of
SFT under standard fire conditions. It is observed that the fire resistance time increases obviously with the
increasing of concrete compressive strength and steel strength. Similarly, the fire resistance time increases when the
length of SFT decreases. Generally, SFT has a longer resistance time when concrete compressive strength and steel
larger, and shorter SFT has a better fire resistance than that of long SFT.

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful for the supports provided by National Natural Science Foundations of China (51508464).
This work was also partially supported by “the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities”
(No.3102016ZY017) and “the Seed Foundation of Innovation and Creation for Graduate Students in Northwestern
Polytechnical University”.

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