Design guidance

This publication presents guidance on the application of a simple design method, as implemented in MACS+ software. The recommendations are conservative and are limited to structures similar to that tested, i.e. on-sway steel-framed buildings with composite floors and composite floors with cellular beams. The guidance gives designers access to whole building's behaviour and allows them to determine which members can remain unprotected while maintaining levels of safety equivalent to traditional methods.

A natural fire model

In recognition that many fire safety engineers are now considering natural fires, a natural fire model is included alongside the use of the standard fire model, both expressed as temperature-time curves in Eurocode 1.

Engineering background document

In addition to the design guidance provided by this publication, a separate engineering background document provides details of fire testing and finite element analysis conducted as part of the FRACOF, COSSFIRE, and FICEB projects in addition to some details of the Cardington tests which were conducted on an eight-storey building near Cardington. The background document will assist the reader to understand the basis of the design recommendations in this publication.

MACS+ research project: Membrane action of composite structures in case of fire

Large-scale fire tests conducted in a number of countries and observations of actual building fires have shown that the fire performance of composite steel framed buildings is much better than is indicated by fire resistance tests on isolated elements. It is clear that there are large reserves of fire resistance in modern steel-framed buildings, and that standard fire resistance tests on single unrestrained members do not provide a satisfactory indicator of the performance of such structures.

Authors:
O. Vassart, ArcelorMittal Belval & Differdange S.A. (L)
B. Zhao, Centre Technique Industriel de la Construction Metallique (F)
R. Hamerlink, Bouwen met Staal (NL)
B. Hauke bauforumstahl (D)
J. de la Quintana, Fundación Labein (E)
I. Talvik, Tallinn Technical University (EE)
Z. Sokol, Ceske vysoke uceni technicke v Praze (CZ)
S. Pustorino, Structura Engineering srl (I)
P. Vila Real, Universidade de Aveiro (PT)
M. Hawes, ASD Westok (UK)
A. Nadjai, University of Ulster (UK)
B. Åstedt, Stiftelsen Svensk Stalbyggnadsforskning (S)
K. Jarmai, University of Miskolc (H)
R. D. Zaharia, Politehnica University Timisoara (RO)
A. K. Kvedaras, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (LT)
C. Baniotopoulos, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (GR)
D. Beg, University of Ljubljana (SI)
J. M. Franssen, University of Liège (B)
G. Wozniak, Instytut Techniki Budowlanej (PL)

Contributions by:
- Mary Brettle, The Steel Construction Institute
- Ian Sims, The Steel Construction Institute
- Louis Guy Cajot, ArcelorMittal
- Renata Obiała, ArcelorMittal
- Mohsen Roosefid, CTICM
- Gisèle Bihina, CTICM

The resulting publication was produced as a result of different research projects:

  • The RFCS Project FICEB+
  • The RFCS Project COSSFIRE
  • The Leonardo Da Vinci ‘Fire Resistance Assessment of Partially Protected Composite Floors’ (FRACOF) project
  • A former project sponsored jointly by ArcelorMittal and CTICM and executed by a partnership of CTICM and SCI