Fire Design Equation for Steel-Polymer Composite Floors in Thermal Fields Via Finite Element Analysis

Materials (Basel). 2020 Dec 7;13(23):5573. doi: 10.3390/ma13235573.

Abstract

Owing to the development of new materials that enhance structural members in the construction field, steel-polymer composite floors have been developed and applied to steel structures. Similar to a sandwich system, steel-polymer composite floors consist of polymers between two steel plates. The structural performance of full-scale composite floors at ambient conditions has been investigated. Additionally, experiments were conducted on analytical models to predict both thermal behavior under fire, including fire resistance based on a small-scale furnace. To evaluate the fire resistance of full-scale steel-polymer composite floors, the thermal behavior and temperature distribution of composite floors should be investigated. Therefore, the temperature distributions of the full-scale composite floors were estimated using the verified analytical model in this study. Furthermore, to determine the fire design equation of steel-polymer composite floors in the thermal field, the correlations between variables were investigated, such as the thickness of top and bottom steel plates and polymers, as well as the fire resistance in the thermal field.

Keywords: finite element analysis; fire resistance; full-scale fire test; insulation performance; steel–polymer composite floor; thermal field.