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Performance-Based Design Of Fire-Exposed Reinforced Concrete Elements Using An Equivalent Standard Fire, Robert T. Kuehnen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Fire events represent one of the most severe loading scenarios for reinforced concrete (RC) buildings. In lieu of intensive computational analysis, designers need simplified methods to assess RC members exposed to natural fires. This thesis focuses on the development of a time equivalent (t_e) to replace a natural fire with an equivalent standard fire, allowing for the implementation of existing simplified analysis methods.

The proposed t_e is based on the average internal temperature profile (AITP) that develops in a section during fire. Two AITP t_e are proposed to accurately or conservatively approximate the AITP of …