The Fire Resistance of Steel Stru ctu res E
GEHRI Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland INTRODUCTION STEEL IS a noncombustible material, but the mechanical properties of structural steel are affected by heat
The fire resistance or more exactly, the fire endurance of a steel element varies greatly and, therefore, we need a better understanding of the con-ditions which affect fire resistance
Fire resistance is understood as the time during which the structural element can withstand the standard provisions of a fire test
For structural elements the only crite-rion to be considered is the structural collapse of the element
Other criteria like tem-perature transmission may be disregarded
For a steel column the standard provisions for a fire test are given in Figure 1