Stainless steel structures exposed to fire

The main purpose of research was to obtain knowledge to evaluate the features of lightweight stainless steel structures in fire explosion and apply the knowledge for products, which advantages the good fire and corrosion resistance. The knowledge was applied to the balconies, the sandwich-structures, the corrucated core sandwich and the lift doors. The fire resistance of considered products was analysed by calculations and tests. One-dimensional finite element code has been written for the computation of temperature of layered structure. By the model the number of sheets and the thickness of insulation material can be estimated. The model enables to define the temperature in the structures so that the fire tests can be compensated and the structure can be optimized by the calculations. The model was applied to define the temperature evolution of the balcony slabs and the lift doors. The emissivity of stainless steels was studied by the fire tests for RHS-tubes at furnace and by the cone calorimeter facility. The value of emissivity for stainless steel is lower than the values of carbon steel. The full-scale tests were carried out for the balconies, the sandwich-panels, the roofs and the corrucated core sandwich structure. In tests for the balconies and the roof structures the fire resistant and load-bearing features were considered and in tests for the sandwich panels and the corrucated core sandwich structures only the fire resistant feature was studied. The calculation of layered structures was verified in full-scale tests for balconies and in cone calorimeter tests. In cone calorimeter tests the number of stainless steel sheets and the material was varied to determinate the feature of insulation. The correlation between the computational and test results is good. The computational completions can be utilised in the product development and so facilitate to find out the optimal solutions. Copyright © Valtion teknillinen tutkimuskeskus (VTT) 2001.