Through-Thickness Thermal Behavior of Two RC Bearing Walls under Fire

Abstract

This paper discusses the through-thickness thermal behavior of two full-scale reinforced concrete (RC) bearing wall test specimens subjected to one-sided fire. The most probable fire exposure for RC wall structures is from one side of the wall only (i.e., compartment-type fire). This fire scenario causes steep thermal gradients through the wall thickness, leading to unsymmetrical fire damage and material degradation that can exacerbate out-of-plane eccentricity effects and compromise stability under service-level tributary gravity loads. A crucial step for the development of validated analytical tools to predict the structural fire behavior of RC walls is the ability to predict the through-thickness thermal gradients. With this objective, the measured thermocouple data from the test specimens is compared with 2D analytical predictions from two simulation software. The results generally show good predictions of the measured temperatures, with the largest discrepancies (in terms of percent error) near the unheated (i.e., back) face of each wall.

Fire Resistance and Post-fire Seismic Behavior of High Strength Concrete Shear Walls

“…In terms of ultimate load, yield load, cracked load, stiffness and ductility, Go et al [4] concluded that reinforced lightweight aggregate concrete walls possessed better fire resistance and structural behavior than reinforced normal weight aggregate concrete walls under the same test conditions. Mueller and Kurama [5] compared the measured thermocouple data from walls with analytical predictions from a simulation software in order to predict the through-thickness thermal gradients with validity. The post-fire seismic behavior of concrete walls was investigated under the low frequency cyclic loading by Xiao et al [6] and Liu et al [7], revealing that the fire exposure deteriorated seismic behavior of walls.…”