IAFSS Structural Fire Engineering Workshop

Dr Susan Lamont
ARUP

We have a range of expert panellists representing researchers and consultants from across the US, New Zealand, Europe and the UK. They will each provide a short presentation on key aspects of structural fire engineering to prompt discussion and debate on the some of the least well understood aspects of structural fire engineering at the current time. The aim will be to highlight the key challenges in structural fire engineering, understand the current state of the art and discuss a way forward. The workshop will be informal with questions encouraged throughout the presentations therefore encouraging interaction of the panellists and all attendees.

The following is an example of the material to be presented:

Prof Andy Buchanan of the University of Canterbury will expand on some of the issues he plans to present in his keynote paper in the main Symposium which focuses on the challenges of predicting structural behaviour in fire.

Dr Guillermo Rein and Jamie Stern-Gotfried of the University of Edinburgh will address the difficulties of predicting post-flashover fires in large open plan floor plates typical of modern office design. It is hoped that this presentation will encourage a number of fire scientists to attend the workshop and become actively involved in structural fire engineering. The success of structural fire engineering is reliant on the ability of fire scientists and structural engineers to work together and learn from each other. The load (the fire) is the single most important input to an analysis and most structural engineers need help in defining and calculating appropriate design fires.

Our ability to calculate the response of steel connections in fire will be addressed by a number of the panellists. Dr Jonathan Barnett and Kevin LaMalva of SGH in the US will describe their research into the collapse of WTC 5 where connection failure was a key issue. Prof Wald of the Czech Technical University in Prague will describe his work on unprotected steel connections in fire and perhaps show us images of a real building fire test to be held on the 18th September, a few days before the workshop.

Dr Allan Jowsey of Arup will highlight how consultants are currently overcoming the potential challenges of calculating design fires in large compartments and structural performance in fire via a case study of a real high rise office building design.

The workshop will be chaired by Dr Susan Lamont of Arup and will be held on Sunday 21st September 2008 from 1- 5pm at the 9th International Symposium of Fire Safety Science.

The presentations and discussion will be recorded in a short report and distributed after the workshop to capture potential ideas for future research and collaboration.