Advanced Analysis of Steel-Frame Buildings for Full Story Fires

Current U.S. codes and standards provide limited guidance on advanced structural fire analysis. The ASCE Fire Protection Committee is developing a performance-based design guideline for fire to provide guidance on analysis techniques and performance criteria for advanced fire analysis methodologies. This paper provides the results of an on-going research project that uses advanced fire analysis techniques to evaluate progressive collapse mechanisms in a ten-story steel-frame office building. This paper presents the results of multiple analyses that vary the fire resistance rating of the structural members subjected to a full-story design fire. The fire protection on each of the structural members (beams, columns, connections) was: (i) design FRR (1hr) on each structural member, and (ii) columns protected with 2hr FRR, beams protected with 1hr FRR. The results of these analyses were compared to the results of previous compartment fire analyses performed by the authors.