Storey-Based Stability Design for Structural Steel Frameworks Accounting for Variability of Building Fires

建筑物中的火灾可能是灾难性的。最近发生在伦敦的格伦费尔大厦火灾和世界贸易中心倒塌等悲剧事件提醒公众，并强化了火灾的灾难性后果。拟议的研究涉及结构消防安全，这是建筑物设计中的一个关键考虑因素。目前，确保钢结构的结构防火安全的做法主要依赖于规定的方法，在该方法中，将防火材料应用于钢构件的表面，以保护结构的完整性，并以规定的方式达到指定的火灾持续时间。从历史上看，规范性方法是根据经验和对单个结构元件的火灾测试开发的，它不会模拟建筑火灾中结构的性能。然而，近年来，人们对火灾条件下的结构行为有了更多的了解，计算能力也有了巨大的提高。因此，基于性能的设计（PBD）的方法，这需要证明结构的防火安全与工程设计方法类似的结构，以抵抗风或地震荷载的设计，已经出现了评估整个建筑结构的防火性能的目的。与风荷载和地震荷载不同，PBD结构的火灾设计需要考虑火灾荷载的位置、大小和分布的不确定性。不幸的是，目前的设计方法无法解决这个问题。 本研究的目的是发展一种先进的PBD方法的稳定性分析和设计的钢框架建筑占建筑火灾荷载的变化/不确定性。这方面的研究严重缺乏。这项研究的重要性在于提高楼宇的消防安全性能，包括改善防止灾难性倒塌的措施，以保障市民的安全，以及在发生楼宇火警时，救援人员和消防员的安全。加拿大人和世界其他地方的人们将受益于更安全的钢结构建筑环境。这项研究的新奇之处在于，该方法将能够提供关键信息，不仅涉及建筑火灾中钢结构建筑的稳定性和完整性，而且还涉及建筑火灾中火灾荷载的不确定性和风险，这些不确定性和风险在建筑规范或传统的分析和设计方法中均不可用。这项研究不仅将推进在这一领域的知识，但也将培训HQP在新兴领域的结构消防工程。有一个迫切需要在这一学科的工程师，因为有很少的工程师在加拿大和世界各地的足够的技能。

Fires in buildings can be catastrophic. Tragic events such as the recent Grenfell Tower fire in London and the collapse of the World Trade Center remind the public and reinforce the catastrophic consequences of the fires. The proposed research addresses structural fire safety, which is a key consideration in the design of buildings. The current practice to ensure structural fire safety for steel structures primarily relies on the prescriptive approach in which fire protection materials are applied on surfaces of steel elements to protect structural integrity and achieve a specified fire duration in a prescriptive way. Historically, the prescriptive approach is developed based on the experience and fire tests on individual structural elements, which does not mimic the performance of a structure in building fires. However, greater understanding of structural behaviour under the fire condition and an enormous increase in computing capacity have been achieved in recent years. As a result, a performance-based design (PBD) approach, which entails for structural fire safety to be demonstrated with engineering design approaches similar to the design of a structure to resist wind or earthquake loads, has emerged with an aim of evaluating the fire performance of entire building structures. Different from that of wind and earthquake loads, the uncertain nature of fire loading, in terms of its location, magnitude and distribution, needs to be considered in the PBD structural fire design. Unfortunately, current design methods are incapable of addressing the issue. The objective of this research is to develop an advanced PBD approach for stability analysis and design of steel framed buildings accounting for variabilities/uncertainties of building fire loads. Research in this area is severely lacking. The importance of the research is to enhance the fire safety performance of the buildings, including improved protection against catastrophic collapse to safeguard the safety of the public as well as that of rescue workers and firefighters in the event of building fire. Canadians and people elsewhere in the world will benefit from having significantly safer steel building environments in which to live and work. The novelty of the research is that the approach will be able to provide crucial information, concerning not only the stability and integrity of structural steel buildings in building fires, but also the uncertainties and risks associated with fire loading in building fires that are not available either in building codes or through conventional analysis and design methodology. This research will not only advance knowledge in this field, but will also train HQP in the emerging field of structural fire engineering. There is an urgent need for engineers in this discipline as there are very few engineers in Canada and worldwide with the sufficient skills.