Experimental analysis on cold-formed steel beams subjected to fire

The great majority of the studies in this area emphasise further the structural behaviour of cold-formed steel members by means of analytical approximation and purely numerical methods. In addition, they generally only take into account the structural behaviour of members with just one profile. On the contrary, this paper reports a series of flexural tests under fire conditions focused on cold-formed galvanised steel beams consisting on compound cold-formed steel profiles which are often used in floors and roofs of warehouses and industrial buildings. The main objective of this research was to assess the failure modes, the critical temperature and the critical time of the studied beams. Other important goals of this research work were also to investigate the influence of the cross-sections, the axial restraint to the thermal elongation of the beam and the rotational stiffness of the beam supports. Finally, the results showed above all that the critical temperature of a cold-formed steel beam might be strongly affected by the axial restraint to the thermal elongation of the beam. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.