A simplified method for calculating non-uniform temperature distributions in thin-walled steel members protected by intumescent coatings under localized fires

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Abstract

This paper presents a method to calculate the non-uniform temperature field of steel members protected by
intumescent coatings under localized fires. In this proposed method, the steel member is divided into a number
of segments along the length according to the localized fire temperature field, and each segment divided
into plate elements with different surrounding fire temperatures. The temperature of each plate element is
assumed uniform and is calculated by the lumped mass equation with the thermal conductivity of intumescent
coatings approximated using a three-stage thermal conductivity model. Heat conduction between different
steel plate elements is ignored. Comparisons of steel temperature results between measured results and the
proposed simplified temperature calculation method show very good agreement in temperature distributions
along the steel member length, in the cross-section and detailed temperature–time relations at critical and high
temperature locations, with differences in calculated and measured average temperatures in different segments
being less than 7.2 %. Comparisons of load carrying capacities of axially-loaded steel members using measured
temperature distributions and calculated temperature distributions show small (<6%) differences.
Original languageEnglish
Article number107580
JournalThin-Walled Structures
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

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