Effects of partial fire protection on temperature developments in steel joints protected by intumescent coating

Abstract

This paper presents experimental results of temperature distribution in fire in four typical types of steel-concrete composite joint (web cleat, fin plate, flush endplate and flexible endplate) with different fire-protection schemes. The test specimens were unloaded and the steelwork of each joint assembly was exposed to a standard fire condition [ISO 834, 1975: Fire Resistance Tests, Elements of Building Construction, International Organization for Standardization, Geneva] in a furnace. In total, 14 tests were conducted, including 4 tests without any fire protection and 10 tests with different schemes of fire protection. The main objective of these tests was to investigate the effects of three practical fire-protection schemes as alternatives to full fire protection of the entire joint assembly. The three alternative methods of fire protection were: (1) protecting a segment, instead of the entire length, of the beams; (2) unprotected bolts and (3) protecting the columns only. The main results of these tests are: (1) if all the steel work (excluding the bolts) in the joint assembly was protected, whether or not protecting the bolts had very little effect on temperatures in the protected steelwork other than the bolts. The bolt temperatures were higher if they were not protected than if they were protected, but the unprotected bolt temperatures in a joint with fire protection to other steelwork were much lower than bolt temperatures in a totally unprotected joint; (2) as far as joint temperatures are concerned, protecting a segment of 400 mm of the beam was sufficient to achieve full protection and (3) if only the column was protected, only the joint components that were in the immediate vicinity of the column (such as welds) developed noticeably lower temperatures than if the joint assembly was unprotected, but due to heat conduction from the unprotected steel beams, these temperature values were much higher than if the joint assembly was protected. Furthermore, the column temperatures in the joint region were much higher than the protected column temperatures.