Flexural buckling and post-buckling analysis of tapered columns in transient fire

This paper presents time-varying flexural buckling and post-buckling responses of tapered columns under a transient fire of which the temperature is non-uniform along the length. First, the transient temperature field within the column is determined by solving a dimensionally reduced transient heat transfer problem considering the convection-radiation boundary conditions and temperature-dependent (TD) material properties. Subsequently, the von Kármán geometric nonlinear theory is applied to obtain the nonlinear equilibrium equation. The nonlinear heat transfer and equilibrium equations are solved by the differential quadrature (DQ) method. According to a yield criterion, the ultimate load at which the material failure occurs is predicted. The influences of a transient localised fire on the temperatures, buckling and post-buckling responses of tapered steel tubular columns are discussed.