The Chinese Performance-based Code for Fire-resistance of Steel Structures

Abstract

In the past two decades, researchers from different countries have conducted series of experimental and theoretical studies to investigate the behaviour of structures in fire. Many new insights, data and calculation methods have been reported, which form the basis for modern interdisciplinary structural fire engineering. Some of those methods are now adopted in quantitative performance-based codes and have been migrated into practice. Mainly based on the achievements in structural fire research at China, the Chinese national code for fire safety of steel structures in buildings has been drafted and approved, and will be released in this year. The code is developed to prevent steel structures subjected to fire from collapsing, ensure safe evacuation of building occupants, and reduce the cost for repairing the damages of the structure caused by fire. This paper presents the main contents of the code, which includes the fire duration requirements of structural components, fundamental requirements on fire safety design of steel components, temperature increasing of atmosphere and structural components in fire, loading effect and capacity of various components in fire, and procedure for fire-resistant check and design of steel components. The analytical approaches employed in the code and their validation works are also presented.

Keywords

• Fire-resistance;
• Steel structures;
• Code;
• Safety evaluation;
• Design