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Equivalent Standard Fire Duration To Evaluate Internal Temperatures In Natural Fire Exposed Rc Beams, Robert T. Kuehnen, Maged A. Youssef

Civil and Environmental Engineering Publications

With the recent shift towards performance-based fire design, practical methods to account for natural fire loading when designing concrete structures are needed. Available design methods and analysis approaches are based on standard fire curves. To apply these methods, a natural fire event can be converted to a standard fire with a specific duration (time equivalent). However, existing time equivalents often ignore the influence of internal temperature gradients on the section behaviour, which is unacceptable for concrete structures.

This paper introduces a time equivalent method suitable for reinforced concrete (RC) beams exposed to natural fire. The method is based on the …