| Fire is one of many hazards that need to be addressed in the design of buildings. There are many tools at the disposal of designers to mitigate the risk posed by this hazard. Fire Protection Engineering is a multi-disciplinary field focused on the development and use of these tools for the protection of people and property from loss in fire. Many factors contribute to the growth of fires in compartments, and the development of these fires can be modeled using computer codes, equations, of sets of curves. There are three modes of heat transfer from a compartment fire to a structural member: radiation, conduction, and convection. Radiative heat transfer dominates in building fires. Three methods for calculating the response of unprotected steel to a compartment fire are the best-fit method, the spreadsheet method, and the finite element code SAFIR. Based on these methods, the response of the selected unprotected steel beam to a standard fire is similar during roughly the first 20 minutes. At longer durations, failure occurs and deviations in calculated response are significant. Results from these calculation methods are expected to be less similar for the analysis of protected steel. |
