Experimental Study of Cold-Formed Steel Floors Made of Hollow Flange Channel Section Joists under Fire Conditions
Publication: Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 142, Issue 2
Abstract
Fire safety plays a vital role in building design because appropriate level of fire safety is important to safeguard lives and property. Cold-formed steel channel sections along with fire-resistive plasterboards are used to construct light-gauge steel frame (LSF) floor systems to provide adequate fire resistance ratings (FRR). It is common practice to use lipped channel sections (LCS) as joists in LSF floor systems, and past research has only considered such systems. This research focuses on adopting improved joist sections such as hollow flange channel (HFC) sections to improve the structural performance and FRR of cold-formed LSF floor systems under standard fire conditions. The structural and thermal performances of LSF floor systems made of a welded HFC, LiteSteel Beams (LSB), with different plasterboard and insulation configurations, were investigated using four full-scale fire tests under standard fires. These fire tests showed that the new LSF floor system with LSB joists improved the FRR in comparison to that of conventional LCS joists. Fire tests have provided valuable structural and thermal performance data of tested floor systems that included time-temperature profiles and failure times, temperatures, and modes. This paper presents the details of the fire tests conducted in this study and their results along with some important findings.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank QUT for providing all the necessary support with the full-scale fire tests, OneSteel Australian Tube Mills and Boral Plasterboard for providing the required LSB sections and gypsum plasterboards, and QUT and Australian Research Council for providing the financial support to conduct this research project.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 142 • Issue 2 • February 2016
Copyright
© 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Feb 21, 2015
Accepted: Jul 22, 2015
Published online: Sep 15, 2015
Published in print: Feb 1, 2016
Discussion open until: Feb 15, 2016
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