Valencia bridge fire tests: Experimental study of a composite bridge under fire

Abstract

The response of bridges subject to fire is an under researched topic despite the number of bridge failures caused by fire. Since available data shows that steel girder bridges are especially vulnerable to fire, this papers delves into their fire response by analyzing with a 3D numerical model the response of a typical bridge of 12.20 m. span length. A parametric study is performed considering: (1) two possibilities for the axial restraint of the bridge deck, (2) four types of structural steel for the girders (carbon steel and stainless steel grades 1.4301, 1.4401, and 1.4462), (3) three different constitutive models for carbon steel, (4) four live loads, and (5) two alternative fire loads (the hydrocarbon fire defined by Eurocode 1 and a fire corresponding to a real fire event). Results show that restraint to deck expansion coming from an adjacent span or abutment should be considered in the numerical model. In addition, times to collapse are very small when the bridge girders are built with carbon steel (between 8.5 and 18 minutes) but they can almost double if stainless steel is used for the girders. Therefore, stainless steel is a material to consider for steel girder bridges in a high fire risk situation, especially if the bridge is located in a corrosive environment and its aesthetics deserves special attention. The methodology developed in this paper and the results obtained are useful for researchers and practitioners interested in developing and applying a performance-based approach for the design of bridges against fire.

Fire resistance of composite steel & concrete highway bridges

“…A more bespoke fire would perhaps be more suitable based on a risk assessment including traffic flow information etc. Besides, the reduction of temperatures away from the burning vehicle is significant which was demonstrated by the first fire experiment of a bridge structure, conducted in 2017 [17]. In order to better understand the response of bridges subjected to fires, more realistic fire models should be used to take account of the decay fire intensity along the bridge span, none of which are captured by prescriptive curves.…”

“…Parameters affecting failure time/mode such as web slenderness and spacing of stiffeners have been studied. However, the estimated failure time and failure mode of a single component is questionable to simulated full-scale bridges and performed a 6m span bridge test in Valencia [17]. In these studies, certain key factors which may affect bridge fire resistance have been discussed, including fire intensity, fire positions, exposure scenarios, material types, live loads and wind.…”

Steel‐Concrete Composite Bridges: Design, Life Cycle Assessment, Maintenance, and Decision‐Making

“…Design proposals are focused on the conception of new geometries or the distribution of materials that improve the behavior of SCCBs [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. Behavior studies are centered on the application of experimental or numerical approaches to study the bridge response when submitted to fire [26][27][28][29][30], seism [31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39], fatigue [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52], secondary torsion [53], vibrations [54][55][56][57][58][59], blasting loads [60], or other phenomena [61][62]...…”

“…Fire resistance studies are focused on modeling fire action with numerical models [26,30] or fluid mechanics [27]. Other studies, related to the analysis of the fire behavior of SCCBs, have also carried out experimental tests to calibrate the numerical models [28,29]. However, all the authors conclude that there are very few studies on the fire behavior of SCCBs.…”

Classifying bridges for the risk of fire hazard via competitive machine learning

“…+ 660,000 and + 878,000 operational bridges in the US and China, respectively) infers that identifying vulnerable bridges to fire can be challenging (Statista, 2020;LTBP, 2020). It is due to such challenges that little research has been directed towards identifying fire-vulnerable bridges (Giuliani et al, 2012;Quiel et al, 2015;Aziz & Kodur, 2013;Kodur et al, 2017;Kodur & Naser, 2019;Alos-Moya et al, 2017;Ma et al, 2019). Of the existing limited works, the majority applied similar methods to that adopted in identifying vulnerable bridges to wind and seismic hazard (i.e.…”