Residual Bearing Capabilities of Fire-Exposed Reinforced Concrete Beams

This work combines thermal and structural analyses to assessing the residual bearing capabilities, flexural and shear capacities of reinforced concrete beams after fire exposure. The thermal analysis uses the finite difference method to model the temperature distribution of a reinforced concrete beam maintained at high temperature. The structural analysis, using the lumped method, is utilized to calculate the residual bearing capabilities, flexural and shear capacities of reinforced concrete beams after fire exposure. The results of the thermal analysis are compared to the experimental results in the literature, and the analytically derived structural results are also compared with full-scale reinforced concrete beams in previous fire exposure experiments. The comparison results indicated that the calculation procedure in this study assessed the residual bearing capabilities of reinforced concrete beams exposed to fire with sufficient accuracy. As no two fires are the same, this novel scheme for predicting residual bearing capabilities of fire-exposed reinforced concrete beams is very promising in that is eliminates the extensive testing otherwise required when determining fire ratings for structural assemblies.