A Simplified Approach for Predicting Temperature Profile in Steel Members With Locally Damaged Fire Protection

Steel structures in building are to be provided with external insulation to delay temperature rise and associated strength degradation when exposed to fire. However, due to delicateness and fragility of some insulation systems, damage might occur in these insulation systems during their service life, and such damage can lead to rapid rise in steel temperature and result in lower fire resistance of structural members. Currently, there are no simple calculation methods for quantifying the effect of insulation loss on steel temperature. In this paper, a simple approach is proposed for tracing the temperature profile in steel members with partial loss of fire protection. The method is developed based on modifying the existing one-dimensional finite difference solutions of the heat transfer equation. The validity of the proposed method is established by comparing the predictions from the proposed method against temperatures obtained from finite element heat transfer model that is created using ANSYS. The comparisons indicate that the proposed method is capable of predicting temperature in steel members with partially damaged insulation to a good degree of accuracy over a wide range of situations. Further, the simplicity of the proposed method makes it attractive for use in fire resistance assessment in steel structures.