Papers by Author: Giuseppe Cefarelli

Abstract: The Fire Safety Engineering (FSE) is a multi-discipline aimed to define the fire safety strategy for buildings under fire conditions, in which structural stability and control of fire spread are achieved by providing active and/or passive fire protection. In this paper, the aspects of FSE for the structural safety checks in case of fire are shown with reference to Italian and European standards. FSE requires the choice of a performance level, the definition of design fire scenarios, the choice of heat flows models and several numerical thermo-mechanical analyses. The information provided by a significant research, performed in Europe for open and closed car parks, are used to apply the FSE to the car parks of the new buildings of the C.A.S.E. Project for L’Aquila, characterized by steel columns supporting the seismically isolated superstructure. The results of the application of the FSE approach are reported and discussed in the second part of the paper.

Abstract: Fire Safety Engineering can be defined as a multi-discipline based on the application of scientific and engineering principles to the effects of fire in order to reduce the loss of life and damage to property by quantifying the risks and hazards involved and provide an optimal solution to risk mitigation. The correct identification of fire scenarios is the central stage in the process of the structural fire design. A design fire scenario is the description of the spread of a particular fire with respect to time and space. In the process of identification of design fire scenarios for the structural fire safety check, all fires must be assessed realistically, choosing those most severe for the structural response. This paper is devoted to evaluate the influence of fire scenarios on the structural behaviour of composite steel-concrete buildings. In order to that, an office building subjected to different fire scenarios was considered. In particular the fire scenarios were defined by both standard fire (prescriptive approach) and natural fire (performance approach). Finally, a comparison between the prescriptive approach and the FSE approach is presented.

Abstract: Experimental tests were recently performed to evaluate resistance and deformability of nine concrete slabs reinforced with Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) bars in fire situation by varying (a) external loads in the range of the service loads, (b) concrete cover in the range of usual values (30-50mm), (c) bar end shape (straight or bent) and its length at the end of the concrete members, namely in the zone not directly exposed to fire (250-500mm). Experimental results showed the importance of concrete cover in the zone directly exposed to fire for the protection provided to FRP bars, due to its low thermal conductivity. Moreover, the length of the FRP bars in the zone of slab not directly exposed to fire and its shape at the end of the members was crucial to ensures slab resistance once the resin softening reduced the adhesion at the FRP-concrete interface in the fire exposed zone of slab. In particular the anchorage obtained simply by bending bars at the end of member in a short zone (250mm) allowed attaining a good structural behavior in case of fire equivalent to that showed by slabs characterized by a large anchoring length (500mm). Tests results are briefly compared and discussed in this paper, whereas the behavior of the bar anchorage is carefully examined based on both the results of numerical thermal analysis and the predictions of a bond theoretical model adjusted for fire situation.