Flexural response of concrete walls to fire

Abstract

The material properties of concrete make it a common construction material for firewalls. Firewalls restrict the propagation of a fire by resisting heat passage and by retaining its structural integrity. The purpose of the present study is to evaluate the structural failure criterion in flexure of both normal and structural lightweight concrete firewalls. Internal stresses are a result of non-linearity of both the thermal gradient and the coefficient of thermal expansion. The deflections caused by the internal stresses will also be compared for both normal and structural lightweight concrete mixes. Based upon these results, structural lightweight concrete tends to outperform normal weight concrete when exposed to the ULC S101 fire curve. Initially, the numerical analysis will assume linear elastic material properties of concrete. A parabolic stress strain curve including the challenges associated with the cracked flexural response will also be addressed. Various boundary conditions such as axial loading, centre restraint, and edge restraint will be investigated for both concrete types.