Recent improvements on numerical methods in structural fire safety

Publisher Summary The chapter presents improvements of numerical methods in structural fire safety. The fire resistance of composite members and complete structures can be determined on the basis of fire tests. Such fire tests are time-consuming and expensive. Therefore, fire tests are less suitable for extensive parametrical studies concerning the load bearing capacity under fire conditions. According to the Eurocodes, in future, advanced calculation models will become more and more important. This contribution deals with the numerical simulation of floor structural systems and columns under fire conditions using the finite element method. For the floor structural systems, a methodology and appropriate models are presented to carry out three-dimensional simulations of the fundamental load carrying mechanisms under fire conditions. The simulations of composite columns focus on special aspects concerning the interaction between normal forces and bending resistance under fire conditions. The objective of the study is to develop a simple calculation procedure for the fire design of composite columns based on the simple calculation method provided by Eurocode 4 for a normal temperature design.