Structures in Fire: State-of-the-Art, Research and Training Needs

Structural fire safety is one of the key considerations in the design and maintenance of the built infrastructure, yet there are serious limitations in the current approaches to structural fire safety and also severe knowledge gaps in the literature. Two main reasons for these limitations are the lack of significant research activities in this field and lack of educational and training programs in the universities. This paper reviews the current state-of-the-art and identifies the research and training needs for improved fire safety in the U.S. These discussions are based on a two-day workshop organized at Michigan State University which brought together many academics from U.S universities, international experts, and design professionals in the structural fire safety field. This paper summarizes the conclusions of the workshop and identifies the top ten research and training needs in structural fire safety.