Performance of composite unprotected steel Beam-deck floor exposed to high temperature (fire flame)

Abstract

An experimental program was conducted to determine the residual of composite Steel Beams-Reinforced Concrete (SB-RC) deck floors fabricated from a rolled steel beam topped with a reinforced concrete slab, exposed to high temperatures (fire flame) of 300, 500, and 700ºC for 1 hour, and then allowed to cool down by leaving them in the lab condition to return to the ambient temperature. The burning results showed that, by exposing them to a fire flame of up to 300ºC, no serious permanent deflection occurred. It was also noticed that the specimen recovered 93% of 19.2 mm of the deflection caused by burning. The recovered deflection of burned composite SB-RC deck floor at 500ºC was 40% of 77.9 mm of the deflection caused by burning with a residual deflection of 46.4 mm. The greatest deterioration occurred when exposed to 700ºC, at this temperature, a higher unrecoverable permanent deflection was recorded (160.3 mm) of the maximum measured burning deflection (173.8mm), indicating that the percent recovered deflection was 8%. Then, all composite SB-RC deck floors were loaded until failure to determine the percent decrease in their ultimate capacity. The results were compared with the behavior of composite SB-RC deck floor without burning (reference specimen).