Minutes of the ASCE Fire Protection Committee Meeting
Prepared by Spencer Quiel, ASCE Fire Protection Committee Member
June 16, 2014
DATE & TIME OF MEETING: April 3, 2014, 1pm – 4pm.
PLACE: Structures Congress 2014, Sheraton Hotel, Boston, MA
ATTENDING:
· Maria Garlock, CHAIR (Princeton U.)· Ann Jeffers (U. Michigan)
· Qian Zhang (U. Michigan)
· Qianru Guo (U. Michigan)
· Kevin Mueller (Notre Dame)
· Spencer Quiel (Lehigh U.)
· Kristi Selden (Purdue)
· Erica Fischer (Purdue) / · Serdar Selamet (Bogazici U.)
· Michael Engelhardt (UT Austin)
· Hussam Mahmoud (Colo. State U.)
· Therese McAllister (NIST)
· Lisa Choe (NIST)
· Jason Averill (NIST)
· Dilip Banerjee (NIST)
· Fahim Sadek (NIST) / · Arash Zaghi (U. Connecticut)
· Allan Jowsey (AkzoNobel)
· Kevin LaMalva (SGH)
· Taka Yokoyama (Hinman)
· Dan Howell (FM Global)
· Farid Alfawakhiri (AISI)
· Steve Szoke (PCA)
· Hossein Mostafei (NRC Canada)
OBJECTIVE:
The meeting was the regularly scheduled annual meeting of this committee. The agenda consisted primarily of discussion of new technical session proposals for the 2015 Structures Congress in Portland, OR and to discuss the ongoing development of the design commentary and associated appendix for fire loading to be included in ASCE 7-15 Standard Minimum Design Load for Buildings and Other Structures. A draft of this document had been submitted to the ASCE 7 committee for review in late 2013 by the lead authors, Kevin LaMalva (SGH) and Therese McAllister (NIST), in conjunction with the chair of the Fire Protection Committee, Maria Garlock (Princeton U.). Additional discussion at this meeting was focused on the development of a separate design guidelines document that would complement the ASCE 7 materials by providing more detailed and comprehensive roadmap and reference manual for the design of structures to resist fire.
SUMMARY OF DISCUSSION:
COMMITTEE ADMINISTRATION (M. Garlock)
· No changes were proposed to the meeting minutes from the previous committee meeting in March 2013 in Pittsburgh à Minutes were approved
· The committee currently has 22 members and bas been growing to include a mixture of backgrounds
· In Structures Congress 2013, all 5 session proposals for structural-fire were rejected
· In 2014, 3 of 6 session proposals were accepted
· For 2015, all committee meetings will be on Wednesday before the conference
· A new chair of this committee will begin their term in October when M. Garlock’s current term ends
PROPOSED TECHNICAL SESSIONS FOR 2015 STRUCTURES CONGRESS
· Topic ideas:
o Bridges and fire (A. Zaghi)
o Fire as a secondary/subsequent event following an initial hazard (S. Quiel)
o Practical applications of structural-fire engineering (S. Quiel)
· F. Sadek: NIST could give a presentation to introduce their new large scale fire lab
· T. McAllister: The ASCE appendix and guidelines should receive an introductory presentation to show practical applications and examine the gap between research and the industry
o K. LaMalva: Explanation is needed to establish the standard or practice and the standard of care with regard to the new document
· M. Engelhardt: AISC standards for fire design will be updated and should be discussed
· A. Jeffers: Probabilistic approaches to fire will be proposed
· S. Selamet: Experimental and numerical approaches, case studies
PROGRESS OF THE ASCE 7 MATERIALS
· A draft of the appendix and commentary were submitted to the ASCE 7 committee in Fall 2013 for balloting
· Comments were received in Jan. 2014 – all sections but 2 passed
o 45 total pages of comments were received
o T. McAllister: The 2 “fails” were relatively minor and can be changed to “pass” by addressing the comments
· Guidelines were 80 total pages and were condensed for the ASCE 7 document
o M. Garlock: Having a shorter, more accessible document is important for practicioners
o This committee should establish internal deadlines concerning these documents and aim to publish them in 1 year
· K. LaMalva: CE.6 Structural Analysis was the most controversial because of performance objectives
o Clients have questions about the intent of the code (IBC is prescriptive)
o T. McAllister: How the objectives are expressed is important and needs to be reworked, otherwise the document will need to be re-ballotted
DISCUSSION OF A SEPARATE GUIDELINES DOCUMENT
· A separate document needs to be consistent with the balloted ASCE 7 documents
· Main Section Contents:
o Encourage collaboration between the fire protection and structural engineer
o Use standard definitions
o 3 domains of performance-based design, as shown in the ASCE 7 documents
o Thermal response to fire effects (fire load and thermal boundary conditions)
o Proceed to calculations of structural element temperatures
· Section 6: Structural response to fire load effects (material curves, methods, etc.)
o References research and provides background
· This document is primarily for structural engineers
· D. Howell: Are material properties beyond the scope of this document?
o M. Garlock: It should be included as a literature review, but maybe some items like masonry and timber should not be included (focus on concrete and steel)
o K. LaMalva: References to other data sets have been included in the current ASCE 7 documents
o F. Sadek: Material curves should be included to provide a design guide
o D. Howell: Maybe multiple references/documents could be used?
· The ASCE 7 documents tell you what you need to know, but the guidelines will tell you how to do it.
o No guidelines currently exist to indicate material models or levels of modeling fidelity
o Analogy to wind loads?
§ M. Garlock: Wind loads are a supplement to ASCE 7, which we may not want to pursue
· Guidelines publishing options: Manual of Practice, Standards Guidelines??
o T. McAllister: Standard is not preferred
o S. Quiel: 2nd edition of the Manual or Practice #78??
o F. Alfawakhiri: Manual of practice should have examples
§ Need to consider protection materials as well (proprietary materials??) such as gypsum, which have large variability of properties (more than steel)
· S. Selamet: Provide references for non-load bearing materials (because they are more changeable) and provide properties for structural materials
o D. Howell: Load-bearing distinction may be difficult to establish
§ Tests are difficult, and should we get data from manufacturers?
§ Maybe offer general data only
§ T. McAllister: NIST has struggled with this in the past
§ K. LaMalva: Benchmark values would be useful
§ A. Jowsey: Comes from a manufacturing background and believes that we should be in contact with the manufacturers for information
· H. Mahmoud: Fire calculations in conjunction with structural calculations?
o K. LaMalva: SFPE handbook has equations for thermal calculations, and the fire engineer should be engaged
o Conventional approach is to model boundary conditions as pinned or fixed, but for high temperature cases this may not be conservative
§ Structural engineer would have to establish the nonlinear B.C.’s
o F. Sadek: Boundary conditions need to be both structural and thermal
o K. LaMalva is on an SFPE committee that is working on a document for calculating the thermal response of structures
o A. Zaghi: Nonlinear structural B.C.’s are more for analysis; for design, we need requirements
§ Section 3 of the ASCE 7 documents provides some of this, but it is more for analysis than design
· Fire is not the primary load consideration the way that gravity loads are
· A. Zaghi: Should this guideline be “Performance-Based” evaluations instead of design?
o Like blast, we could have general recommendations for hardening
o K. LaMalva: These provisions won’t be required, though
o T. McAllister: If someone chooses to go the PBD route, then they would have to abide by these provisions
§ “Objectives” language in Section 3 may change to “Goals”
o “Objectives” may be too specific
o M. Garlock: Maybe this is a PB evaluation instead
o T. McAllister: Limit states and criteria need to be established
o Something is missing to connect this to application
o K. LaMalva: In practice, we do demand-to-capacity comparisons
§ Apply fire protection to manage fuel loads to control demand
§ Structural design affects capacity
o S. Selamet: Demand-to-capacity is missing from this document
§ K. LaMalva will draft a demand-to-capacity discussion
o Clarifying the objectives will help implementation
o F. Sadek: Demand-to-capacity is not the only consideration; extreme deflections should also be considered
· K. LaMalva: Links to progressive collapse and blast?
o F. Sadek: There is a standards and a technical committee for Progressive Collapse
§ Threat independent approach
o S. Szoke: Fire following progressive collapse should also be considered
§ Limitations need to be acknowledged
§ “Structural” PBD needs to be clarified
o H. Mahmoud: Limitations are important so that analysis won’t be used improperly
· S. Szoke: ASTM D169?? concrete fire properties are available
o Timber would be more residential (Type 4 construction)
§ Less common for structural-fire engineering
· S. Selamet: Finite elements vs. finite difference approaches
o Equations for each were included in different sections of the existing documents?? Pgs 55-56
o Equations should be provided for both
DISCUSSION OF GUIDELINE TASKS
· Volunteers:
o M. Engelhardt, H. Mahmoud à Structural steel properties
o T. Yokoyama à bolts and welds, cold formed steel
o Rivets and historic steel?
o F. Alfawakhiri à Fire resistance of archaic structures (cast iron, wrought iron) has been addressed in a publication
§ K. LaMalva: SGH has seen project requests for these materials
o S. Szoke à Concrete properties (ACI 216)
§ K. Mueller: Notre Dame has done a lot of fire research in concrete and will contribute
§ S. Selamet: In EC2, for high fidelity models, you can use your own concrete models
§ S. Quiel: Conservative values could be published in the guideline, and more aggressive values could be used from manufacturers or references to incentivize efficiency and economy
o T. Yokoyama knows someone at Arup who has worked on timber in fire
· T. McAllister: A schedule should be set and the document opened up for review and comments
o K. LaMalva will clean up the existing documents, incorporate balloting comments and distribute to the committee
o M. Garlock: By July 1, 2014, we will have a materials draft
· S. Selamet: More information regarding the failure of concrete is needed beyond property reduction curves
o Cracking, spalling, plasticity, etc.
o Definition of material failure
· D. Howell: There is a separate ASCE load combination for residual effects
o F. Alfawakhiri: Concrete will not recover its strength with cooling
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