Fire Performance of Steel-Timber Hybrid Beam Section

Abstract

Slim-floor-type of steel-timber hybrid floor systems which use steel beams contained within the depth of the cross-laminated timber (CLT) floor slab offer many benefits, but there is still very little research available on the fire resistance performance of these systems. In the study presented in this paper two furnace tests and numerical simulations have been conducted to investigate the thermal profiles of the steel member and CLT slabs and to obtain information on the temperature development and charring of the hybrid beam section when it is exposed to standard fire conditions. Also, the effects of intumescent fire protection on temperatures and charring performance were investigated. Numerical 2D thermal simulations for unprotected and protected cases were conducted using SAFIR software, and the agreement between experiments and numerical-analysis predictions were in general very good. The results show that intumescent protection reduces the temperatures of the steel and CLT components as well as charring depth significantly, and the start of charring at CLT slab support may be delayed if intumescent paint protection thicker than that required for the load bearing steel member is used. The result also showed that CLT temperatures exceed 100°C already in the early stages of the fire which decrease the strength and stiffness properties of CLT much before the start of charring. Therefore, the fire design of the CLT slab support should not only consider the char depth and residual cross-section analysis but also the reduction in strength.