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Measurement of the Behavior of Steel Beams under Localized Fire Exposure

Metadata Updated: July 29, 2022

A total of nine localized fire tests on steel beams were designed and conducted in the National Fire Research Laboratory as part of its commissioning project, including thermal tests (Tests 1 through 5) and four-point bending test at ambient (Test 6) and elevated temperatures (Tests 7 through 9). All the tested specimens were nominally 6.2-m long W16×26 beams made of ASTM A992 steel. Each specimen was supported by one of the two following connections: (i) simple support (Tests 1 through 8), and (ii) double-angles bolted to laterally braced support columns (Test 9). The midspan of each specimen was exposed to an open-flame fire using the 1-m2 natural gas burners. The burner was located 1.1 m below the bottom flange of the beam at midspan. A four-point flexural loading scheme was used to apply concentrated forces at two locations 2.44 m apart around midspan. The data included temperatures, the heat release rates from the burner, and structural measurements including forces, displacements and strains. The Type B standard uncertainties in various measurements were also included. Overall, the test results showed that the heating rate of the specimen was sensitive to the prescribed heat release rate-time relationship. However, the thermal gradient developed in the fire-exposed cross sections of the beam never achieved linearity under the localized fire exposure. Regardless of the connection types and fire conditions (i.e., steady-state or transient-state fire), the beams exhibited a similar behavior and failure mode. When subjected to combined fire and flexural loads, the beam specimens exhibited the lateral-torsional buckling followed by runaway vertical displacements at midspan. Additional details of experimental procedures and uncertainty analysis for this experimental series are provided in the following publications: 1) Zhang, C., Choe, L., Gross, J., Ramesh, S., Bundy, M. (2017). Engineering Approach for Designing a Thermal Test of Real-scale Steel Beam Exposed to Localized Fire. Fire Technology, Vol 53, Issue 4, pp 1535-1554. DOI: 10.1007/s10694-016-0646-7 2) Choe, L., Ramesh, S., Zhang, C., Gross, J. (2016). The Performance of Structural Steel Beams Subjected to a Localized Fire. The 9th International Conference on Structures in Fire (SiF 16), June 8-10, 2016, Princeton, NJ.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: See this page for license information.

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References

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10694-016-0646-7

Dates

Metadata Created Date March 11, 2021
Metadata Updated Date July 29, 2022
Data Update Frequency irregular

Metadata Source

Harvested from NIST

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date March 11, 2021
Metadata Updated Date July 29, 2022
Publisher National Institute of Standards and Technology
Maintainer
Identifier 59145AB0040F183BE0531A5706818E571856
Language en
Data Last Modified 2017-08-14 00:00:00
Category Fire:Structural fire resistance
Public Access Level public
Data Update Frequency irregular
Bureau Code 006:55
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 24f562f2-3568-43ad-8779-aee443ea561a
Harvest Source Id 74e175d9-66b3-4323-ac98-e2a90eeb93c0
Harvest Source Title NIST
Homepage URL https://data.nist.gov/od/id/59145AB0040F183BE0531A5706818E571856
License https://www.nist.gov/open/license
Program Code 006:045
Related Documents https://doi.org/10.1007/s10694-016-0646-7
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash e850e3a11ef41bb7bf6fa3d274d9e96d4ad8f90b
Source Schema Version 1.1

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