Magazine of Concrete Research Magazine of Concrete Research

http://dx.doi.org/10.1680/jmacr.15.00329
Fire resistance of RC beams under design
fire exposure
Gao, Dai and Teng
Paper 1500329
Received 06/08/2015; revised 05/01/2016; accepted 05/01/2016
Keywords: beams & girders/finite-element methods/
temperature-related & thermal effects
ICE Publishing: All rights reserved

Fire resistance of RC beams

under design fire exposure
Wan-Yang Gao Jin-Guang Teng
Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chair Professor of Structural Engineering, Department of Civil and
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China Environmental Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University,
Jian-Guo Dai Hong Kong, China
Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China
(corresponding author: cejgdai@polyu.edu.hk)

This paper presents the development of a design approach for predicting the fire resistance of reinforced concrete
(RC) beams exposed to design fire. The proposed method is based on the energy-based time equivalence method in
combination with a correction factor that is formulated as a function of concrete cover depth and compartmental
characteristics. In the proposed approach, the fire resistance period of an RC beam under design fire exposure can be
deduced from that of the same RC beam under standard fire exposure; the latter can be predicted using a set of
explicit equations previously developed by the authors. The fire resistance data of RC beams under design fire
exposure, which were used to formulate and validate the proposed approach, were generated using a reliable finite-
element approach. The proposed design approach is shown to be accurate in predicting the fire resistance of RC
beams under design fire exposure.

Notation Tc temperature of fire-exposed surfaces (°C)

A total area of fire-exposed surfaces (m2) Td, Tf fire temperature (°C)
Asc/Ast ratio of total area of corner tension rebars to total Tmax maximum temperature of design fire (°C)
area of tension rebars t fire exposure time (h)
At total area of enclosure (walls, ceiling and floor, t* fictitious time (h)
including openings) (m2) te(exact) ‘precise’ time equivalent (min)
Av total area of vertical openings on all walls (m2) te(energy) approximate time equivalent estimated using the
b beam width energy-based method (min)
C specific heat of the boundary of enclosure (J/kg · K) γ load ratio
c concrete cover depth ε emissivity of concrete
(dΓ/dt)ref reference decay rate of the time–temperature curve ρ density of the boundary of enclosure (mm)
(°C/h) ρs reinforcement ratio of tension steel rebars
E total energy absorbed during fire exposure (J) σ Stefan–Boltzmann constant (5·67
10−8 W/m2 · K4)
F(O) effect of the opening factor ϕ(c) effect of concrete cover depth
h beam depth ψ(I) effect of the thermal inertia of the boundary of
hc convective heat transfer coefficient (W/ m2 · K) enclosure
heq average of window heights on all walls (m)
I square root of thermal inertia of the boundary of
enclosure (J/m2 · s1/2 · K) Introduction
k thermal conductivity of the boundary of enclosure Structural fire resistance is an important issue that needs to be
(W/m · K) tackled during the design process of a building. To minimise
l beam length the possibility of fire-induced structural failure, fire resistance
O opening factor (m1/2) rating requirements for different building components (such as
qc convective heat flux walls, slabs, beams or columns) typically range from 0·5 h to
qr radiative heat flux 4 h depending on the type of occupancy, number of storeys,
qt,d fuel load density and floor area of the building. In current design codes, the
Rdesign fire resistance period of RC beam under design fire fire resistance rating of reinforced concrete (RC) beams is tra-
exposure (min) ditionally assured using a prescriptive approach such as the
Renergy energy-based fire resistance period (min) tabulated method, which specifies some deemed-to-satisfy
Rstandard standard fire resistance period requirements of the minimum beam dimensions and the

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 Magazine of Concrete Research
minimum concrete cover depth (ACI, 2014; BSI, 1985; CEN,
2004; SA, 2009). The prescriptive approach was derived based
on limited test data of RC beams under standard fire exposure,
and thus it does not account for the effects of many important
factors that govern the fire behaviour of RC beams, including
the geometrical configuration, load level, temperature-
dependent material properties and acceptable failure criteria
(Gao et al., 2013). More importantly, the standard fire test
does not consider the complexity of real fires in RC buildings
as the time–temperature curve given in standards (i.e. ASTM
E119 (ASTM, 2015) or ISO 834 (ISO, 1999)) represents only
one type of fire exposure. As a result, the fire resistance rating
acquired from a standard fire test is not the same as the
specific duration an RC beam can survive in a real fire without
collapse. In addition, fire tests are very expensive and time-
consuming, and cannot be used to generate a large database
for developing rational fire-resistance design guidelines.
As an alternative to fire tests, over the past three decades,
numerical models have been developed to predict the thermal
and mechanical responses of RC beams under standard fire
exposure (Capua and Mari, 2007; Dotreppe and Franssen,
1985; El-Fitiany and Youssef, 2009; Gao et al., 2013; Guo and
Shi, 2011; Kodur and Dwaikat, 2008; Kodur et al., 2009; Riva
and Franssen, 2008; Wu and Lu, 2009). These numerical
models have enabled the effects of various design parameters
on the fire performance of RC beams to be studied in a cost-
effective way. Fire resistance analysis of an RC beam usually
consists of two steps – a thermal response analysis and a mech-
anical response analysis. To facilitate the fire resistance evalu-
ation of RC beams in a more practical way, previous
researchers have also developed explicit equations to predict
the thermal responses of bare or insulated RC beams under
standard fire exposure (Gao et al., 2014a, 2015; Kodur et al.,
2013; Wickstrom, 1986). The advantage of these explicit
equations is that they can be used in combination with the sec-
tional analysis method (Desai, 1998) or a simplified calcu-
lation method (i.e. the ‘500°C isotherm method’ (Anderberg,
1978) and the ‘zone method’ (Hertz, 1981, 1985)) to predict
the fire resistance of RC beams under standard fire exposure.
A detailed understanding of the fire resistance of RC beams
under standard fire exposure has been achieved through all
these efforts. Empirical design equations for predicting the fire
resistance of RC beams considering the effects of load ratio,
concrete cover depth, reinforcement ratio and distribution ratio
of tension steel rebars, cross-sectional dimensions and aggre-
gate type have already been proposed by Gao et al. (2014b).
Nevertheless, most of the previous studies were conducted on
RC beams under standard fire exposure, and little attention
has been paid to the thermal and mechanical responses of RC
beams under real fire exposure (Ellingwood and Lin, 1991).
In reality, the fire scenario experienced by an RC beam varies
from one compartment to another and depends on the fuel
load, ventilation conditions and wall lining properties of the
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Fire resistance of RC beams under design
fire exposure
Gao, Dai and Teng
building in which the RC beam is located. To realise perform-
ance-based fire resistance design of RC beams that provides a
more rational and flexible solution than a prescriptive design
approach, an in-depth understanding of the thermal and mech-
anical responses of RC beams under real fire exposure is
highly desirable (Kodur et al., 2010; Yao and Tan, 2009).
However, considering the complex characteristics of a real fire
scenario, it is not possible to directly conduct the tremendous
number of fire tests or numerical simulations required for all
possible real fire scenarios. One possible solution to this great
challenge is to establish a time equivalence concept that relates
the severity of an idealised real fire exposure to that of a stan-
dard fire exposure, the latter being well understood, as men-
tioned earlier. Such a solution is expected to facilitate a fire
resistance evaluation of an RC beam exposed to any possible
fire scenario, provided that the fire resistance period under stan-
dard fire exposure is already known. The time equivalence
concept has been established for protected steel members under
design fire exposure, but very limited work has been done in this
area for RC beams (Kodur et al., 2010). This paper is therefore
concerned with the development of a design approach for pre-
dicting the fire resistance of RC beams exposed to design fire
using an energy-based time equivalence method.
The paper consists of four major parts. The first part provides
a review of design fire scenarios and existing time equivalence
methods for fire resistance evaluation of structural members
under design fire exposure. The limitations of these time equiv-
alence methods are then discussed. The second part is con-
cerned with a finite-element (FE) approach for predicting the
fire performance of RC beams exposed to design fire and its
use in a parametric study. The validated FE approach was
used to conduct an extensive parametric study, in which the
effects of beam parameters and compartmental characteristics
on the fire resistance of RC beams under design fire exposure
were investigated. Based on the FE results generated from the
parametric study, the third part proposes a modified time
equivalence method for predicting the fire resistance of RC
beams exposed to design fire. Finally, an example is given to
illustrate the application of the proposed method in practical
design, and conclusions are presented.
Design fire and time equivalence method
Design fire
As mentioned in the introductory section, the effect of real fires
on the structural performance of RC beams needs to be quanti-
fied to achieve a more rational approach for fire resistance
design. Figure 1 illustrates the development of a possible real
fire, which involves four stages – growth, flashover, fully devel-
oped and decay (Purkiss and Li, 2014). In the growth stage,
structural integrity is not significantly influenced as the fire does
not reach a high temperature (i.e. the temperature is normally
lower than 300°C). However, once the fire temperature reaches
about 600°C, flashover occurs and the fire enters the fully
 Magazine of Concrete Research Fire resistance of RC beams under design
fire exposure
Gao, Dai and Teng

Flashover
Temperature
Growth Fully developed Decay

Standard fire curve

600 °C

Real fire curve

300 °C Design
fire curve

Time
Ignition/smouldering

Figure 1. Temperature development of a real fire and a standard

fire

developed stage, when the temperature may exceed 1000°C. For where Td is the fire temperature (in °C) and t* is the fictitious
fire resistance analysis of an RC beam, the post-flashover stages time (in h) given by
of a real fire are of major importance. During these stages, the
RC beam starts to experience strength and stiffness reductions 2: t* ¼ tΓ
due to high-temperature heating (Li et al., 2013).
where t is the fire exposure time (in h) and
A number of mathematical models have been developed over the
past 40 years in an attempt to describe the time–temperature
ðO=I Þ2
curve of a post-flashover fire for use in structural design. These 3: Γ¼
models are commonly referred to as design fires, and the ðOref =Iref Þ2
notable ones include the models developed by Magnusson
and Thelandersson (1970), Lie (1974), Babrauskas (1981), in which O is the opening factor (m1/2) and I is the square root
McCaffery et al. (1981), Wickstrom (1985), Tanaka et al. (1997), of thermal inertia of the boundary of enclosure (J/m2 · s1/2 · K),
Ma and Makelainen (2000), Barnett (2002, 2007), Zehfuss and which are given by (CEN, 2002)
Hosser (2007), Du and Li (2012) and the Eurocode ‘parametric
pffiffiffiffiffiffi
fire curve’ (CEN, 2002). It is worth noting that analysis of post- 4a: O ¼ Av heq =At ð002  O  02Þ
flashover fire behaviour is complex and the above-mentioned
models are based on some simplified assumptions, notably that
the temperature distribution after post-flashover is uniform
throughout a fire compartment and that the fuel burns in a pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
uniform way (Buchanan, 2001; Law, 1983). The reliability of 4b: I¼ kρC ð100  I  2200Þ
these models is not discussed here, but can be found elsewhere
(Bwalya, 2008; Bwalya et al., 2003; Hurley, 2005). Among these where Av is the total area of vertical openings on all walls, heq
models, the Eurocode parametric fire curve (CEN, 2002) has is the average of window heights on all walls, At is the total
been widely used in estimating the temperature evolution of a area of the enclosure (walls, ceiling and floor, including open-
post-flashover fire (Bwalya, 2008; Wang, 1997). This fire curve is ings), k, C and ρ are the thermal conductivity, specific heat
a function of compartmental characteristics including the fuel and density of the boundary of enclosure, respectively, and
load (i.e. calorific values of the available combustible materials), Oref = 0·04 m1/2 and Iref = 1900 J/m2 · s1/2.K are the two refer-
the ventilation conditions (i.e. dimensions of openings) and the ence values determined according to Feasey and Buchanan
thermal inertia of the boundary of enclosure (CEN, 2002). The (2002). In the case of Γ = 1, Equation 1 approximates the
heating phase of the fire curve is given by ISO 834 standard fire curve (ISO, 1999) for temperatures up to
about 1300°C. It should be noted that the duration of the


1: Td ¼ 20 þ 1325 1  0324e02t*  0204e17t*  0472e19t* heating phase is defined as a function of the fuel load density
(qt,d), which is related to the total surface area of the enclosure

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 Magazine of Concrete Research
(i.e. fuel load per area); more details on determination of the
duration of the heating phase can be found in EN 1992-1-2
(CEN, 2002).
The cooling phase of the fire curve is calculated using the
decay rate proposed by Feasey and Buchanan (2002), given by
  pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
dΓ dΓ O=I
5: ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
dt dt ref Oref =Iref
where (dΓ/dt)ref is the reference decay rate of the time–
temperature curve. The reference decay rate is 625°C/h for
a design fire with a heating phase shorter than 0·5 h and
250°C/h for a heating phase longer than 2 h; for a heating
phase duration in between these values, the reference decay
rate can be deduced using linear interpolation. From
Equations 1–5, it is clear that the heating and cooling phases
of a design fire are related to the compartment characteristics;
different combinations of these characteristics lead to different
design fires (i.e. time–temperature curves).
Figure 1 shows a design fire curve as a close representation of
a real fire, along with the ISO 834 standard fire curve (ISO,
1999). It is clear that the design fire differs significantly from
the standard fire in several important aspects, including the
heating rate, the maximum temperature, the fire duration and
the presence of the cooling phase. Due to these differences, fire
resistance data from fire tests or detailed numerical analyses
of RC beams under standard fire exposure are not directly ap-
plicable in assessing fire resistance under design fire exposure.
A practicable solution to this challenge is to establish a
method that relates the fire severity of a design fire to that of a
standard fire so that the fire resistance periods under the two
fires can be related (Kodur et al., 2010).
Time equivalence method
The concept of equivalent fire severity has been used in pre-
dicting the fire resistance of a structural member under design
fire exposure. The method used to establish fire severity equiv-
alence between a design fire and a standard fire is known as
the determination of the ‘time equivalent’ of a design fire.
More specifically, the time equivalent, otherwise known as t-
equivalent, is the time period elapsed during a standard fire
that produces the same fire severity as that of a design fire over
a given time period. Based on this equivalence, the fire resist-
ance period of a structural member under design fire exposure
can be evaluated as the equivalent fire resistance period (i.e.
the time equivalent) under standard fire exposure. A number
of methods and empirical formulas have been published in
the literature for determining fire severity equivalence. These
methods include the equal-area method, maximum tempera-
ture method, minimum load capacity method and energy-
based method.
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Fire resistance of RC beams under design
fire exposure
Gao, Dai and Teng
The equal-area method proposed by Ingberg (1928) was the
earliest method. It is based on the assumption that if the areas
underneath the time–temperature curves (above a baseline of
300°C) of two fires are equal, the fire severities are equal. This
method has no rational basis as the use of area for comparison
is not meaningful (Buchanan, 2001; Harmathy, 1987; Law,
1983; Purkiss and Li, 2014). At high temperatures, heat trans-
fer is usually dominated by radiation, which is proportional
to the temperature difference raised to the fourth power.
Therefore, the equal-area method may underestimate the sever-
ity of a short hot fire and overestimate that of a long cool fire,
although both result in the same area underneath the two
time–temperature curves.
The maximum temperature method is based on the assump-
tion that two fires have the same fire severity if the maximum
temperatures reached by the two fires at a selected reference
point of the structural member are identical. Some empirical
formulas available in the literature (e.g. CEN, 2002; CIB, 1986;
Law, 1971, 1983) have been derived using the maximum temp-
erature method (Kodur et al., 2010). This method has mainly
been used for protected steel members and may not be appli-
cable to RC members. This is because the fire performance of
RC members is not only governed by the maximum tempera-
ture of the steel reinforcement (usually selected as the reference
point) but is also influenced by other parameters such as geo-
metrical dimensions, load level, reinforcement ratio and
concrete cover depth of steel reinforcement (Gao, 2013; Gao
et al., 2014b).
The minimum load capacity method determines the fire sever-
ity equivalence by comparing the load capacity of a structural
member under standard fire exposure with the minimum load
capacity achievable in a design fire. Compared with the
two other methods already discussed, this method normally
results in a better estimation of time equivalent. However, the
method requires detailed numerical analysis to determine
the load-carrying capacity, which limits its use in practical
design. In addition, a deflection criterion, rather than the
load capacity criterion, may be more reliable in some cases in
defining the failure limit of RC beams under fire exposure
because the loss of structural integrity may be better character-
ised by excessive deflections (Gao et al., 2013; Kodur and
Dwaikat, 2008).
The energy-based method is based on the assumption that the
severity of a fire can be described by the amount of energy
absorbed by the structural member during fire exposure. The
method was originally proposed by Harmathy and Mehaffey
(1982). In their study, a variable termed the ‘normalised heat
load’ was introduced to calculate the total heat penetrating the
structural element during fire exposure. The normalisation is
with respect to the thermal inertia of the wall lining materials.
The method is actually to quantify the maximum temperature
rise achieved at a depth corresponding roughly to the distance
 Magazine of Concrete Research Fire resistance of RC beams under design
fire exposure
Gao, Dai and Teng

within which the important load-bearing components (e.g. for the fire resistance design of RC beams under design fire
steel bars) are located (Harmathy, 1987). exposure.

A new energy-based approach was proposed by Kodur et al.
(2010) for predicting the time equivalents of RC beams under
design fire exposure. To improve the accuracy of the energy-
based approach, Kodur et al. (2010) employed the following
equation to modify the direct predictions of the energy-based
method
teðexactÞ
6: ¼ ð16  00004Tmax Þ
teðenergyÞ
It should be noted that the purpose of this paper is to provide
a rational approach for fire resistance design of RC beams
under design fire exposure, rather than to provide an approach
for predicting the time equivalent of a design fire (as an
approximation of fire resistance). Therefore, the standard fire
resistance period (Rstandard) is assumed to be already known,
from which the fire resistance period of the RC beams under
design fire exposure (Rdesign) can be determined using the time
equivalence method.

where te(exact) is the ‘precise’ time equivalent of an RC beam
computed from a numerical analysis (i.e. a fibre-section analy-
sis in Kodur et al. (2010)), te(energy) is the approximate time
equivalent estimated using the energy-based method and Tmax
(in °C) is the maximum temperature of the design fire.
In reality, the damage suffered by an RC beam under fire
exposure and the corresponding fire resistance period depend
not only on the energy absorbed by the beam but also on some
other factors, such as the temperature evolution of steel
reinforcement and the temperature gradient within the beam
cross-section. However, these aspects have not yet been con-
sidered in existing studies based on the energy-based method.
The above review clearly indicates that most of the time equiv-
alence methods and empirical formulas have been proposed
for fire resistance design of protected steel members, with
much less work conducted for RC beams. Furthermore,
the energy-based time equivalence method established for
RC beams has some limitations and does not account for
the significant effects of various other factors. There is there-
fore an urgent need to develop a rational and reliable approach
Finite-element parametric study
To establish a quantitative relationship between the fire resist-
ance of an RC beam under standard fire exposure and that of
the same beam under design fire exposure, a large amount of
data for RC beams under design fire exposure is required.
Therefore, a detailed parametric study was carried out using
the three-dimensional FE approach of Gao et al. (2013). This
parametric study had two specific purposes
& to identify the significant beam parameters that influence
the fire resistance of RC beams under design fire exposure
& to provide sufficient fire resistance data for calibrating the
energy-based time equivalence method for predicting the
fire resistance periods of RC beams under design fire
exposure.
Table 1 provides a summary of the parameters examined in the
FE parametric study. In total, respectively 75 and 96 numerical
simulation cases were completed for the two purposes listed
above. Details of the FE approach for predicting the thermal
and the mechanical responses of RC beams under standard
fire exposure can be found in the work of Gao et al. (2013),

Purpose Aggregate type Section, b
h: l/h c: mm ρs: % γ Asc/Ast Fire curve

mm
mm

Identification Siliceous 250
250 16 20 0·3 0·1 1 ISO 834 (ISO, 1999)
of critical Calcareous 250
450 8·89 30 0·9 0·3 3/4 Long cool
parameters 250
600 6·67 40 1·2 0·5 2/3 Short hot
50 1·5 0·7 1/2
2·4 0·9 1/3
1/4
Formulation Siliceous 250
250 16 20 1·2 0·7 2/3 DF-F1 – DF-F5
of the design 30 DF-O1 – DF-O12
approach 40 DF-T1 – DF-T9
50

Table 1. Values of main parameters examined in the parametric

study (values in bold are reference values)

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 Magazine of Concrete Research
where the FE approach was validated against standard fire
tests available in the literature. A brief introduction to the FE
approach is provided in the following section. In this study, the
above FE approach was further extended to predict the fire
performance of RC beams under design fire exposure.
Finite-element approach
The FE approach involves a sequentially coupled thermo-
mechanical procedure implemented using the software package
Abaqus (HKS, 2008). A heat transfer analysis is first con-
ducted to obtain the temperature distribution in the section of
the RC beam, and then a mechanical response analysis is
carried out to predict the structural performance. The tempera-
ture results of all the element nodes are stored as a function of
time in the heat transfer analysis and then provided to the
mechanical response analysis.
During the heat transfer analysis, RC beams are exposed to
fire from both the bottom and the two side surfaces while the
ambient condition is assumed to prevail on the top surface.
The fire temperature is defined as the furnace temperature in
numerical simulations of fire tests (Dwaikat and Kodur, 2009;
Lin et al., 1987; Wu and Qiao, 2011) or using the ISO 834
standard fire curve (ISO, 1999) or the design fire curve in the
FE parametric study. Heat is transmitted from the fire to the
beam surfaces via convection and radiation. Convective heat
transfer coefficients (hc) of 25 W/m2.K and 9 W/m2.K are
used to define heat convection at the three exposed surfaces
and at the top surface of the beam, respectively (CEN, 2002);
the former is reduced to a smaller value of 9–15 W/m2.K for
the cooling stage of a furnace fire through a trial-and-error
analysis to achieve a close prediction of temperature results
measured at the cooling stage of existing fire tests, whereas
9 W/m2.K is used in the FE parametric study during the cool-
ing stage of a design fire. The radiative heat transfer between
the fire and the exposed surfaces is calculated using an emissiv-
ity (ε) value of 0·8 for concrete materials (CEN, 2002). More
details about the heat transfer analysis can be found in pre-
vious studies conducted by the authors (Gao et al., 2014a,
2015), which provide accurate temperature predictions of bare
and insulated RC beams under standard fire exposure.
During the mechanical response analysis, concrete is modelled
using a damaged plasticity model implemented in Abaqus
(HKS, 2008). The damaged plasticity model in Abaqus uses two
concepts, isotropic plasticity in combination with scalar
damaged elasticity, to represent the inelastic behaviour of con-
crete. The yield criterion is based on the work initially proposed
by Lubliner et al. (1989) and later modified by Lee and Fenves
(1998). In the elastic regime, the material response is linear.
Once the initial yield surface is reached, the evolution of the
yield surface under any given loading condition (i.e. the size of
the subsequent yield surface) is governed by two hardening/soft-
ening variables, one in compression and the other in tension.
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Fire resistance of RC beams under design
fire exposure
Gao, Dai and Teng
In the present study, the model for compression-dominated be-
haviour of concrete permits strain hardening prior to strain
softening. For tension-dominated behaviour, the behaviour
of concrete is assumed to be linear elastic until the tensile
strength is reached. The tension-softening behaviour of cracked
concrete is simulated using the smeared crack approach in com-
bination with the crack band model (Bazant and Oh, 1983),
where a tensile stress–crack opening displacement relationship
rather than a tensile stress–strain relationship is employed
to achieve mesh-insensitive results. For reinforcing steel, the
tensile stress–strain–temperature relationships at ambient and
elevated temperatures are defined according to EN 1992-1-2
(CEN, 2004). The CEB-FIP bond–slip model (CEB-FIP, 1993)
is employed to describe the shear interaction of the steel rebar-
to-concrete interface at ambient temperature. Reductions in
bond strength and in interfacial fracture energy are then incor-
porated into the model to reflect bond degradations at elevated
temperatures (Gao et al., 2013). Such a bond–slip model can
also simulate the load transfer across cracks through the rebar,
and thus provides an explicit consideration of the tension-
stiffening effect of concrete at elevated temperatures. Full
details of the constitutive models for concrete, reinforcing steel
and bond interfaces at elevated temperatures can be found
in previous work (Gao et al., 2013) where the accuracy of the
FE model for predicting the fire performance of RC beams
under standard fire exposure is reported in detail.
Validation of the FE approach for design fire
exposure
In the present study, the above FE approach was applied to the
prediction of RC beams under design fire exposure to further
validate its reliability. Several tests on RC beams under design
fire exposure carried out by Wu and Qiao (2011), Dwaikat
and Kodur (2009) and Lin et al. (1987) were selected as the
benchmark problems for validation purposes; they were chosen
because their geometrical and material properties as well as
the design fire curves (i.e. furnace temperatures) were provided
in detail, as summarised in Table 2. All the beams had three
exposure surfaces (i.e. the bottom surface and the two side
surfaces), while the top surface was exposed to ambient
conditions. Comparisons between the test results and the FE
results are made in terms of the thermal response only as the
accuracy of the mechanical response analysis of RC beams is
independent of the fire scenario once the fire is properly
characterised by a temperature–time relationship.
Wu and Qiao (2011) tested eight RC beams to investigate the
effects of axial and rotational restraint conditions and load
level on performance under design fire exposure. All the beams
had a cross-section of 250 mm
400 mm and a total length of
4·4 m. Only the results of four of the beams were reported by
Wu and Qiao (2011). Figure 2 shows a comparison of the test
results and the FE predictions for these four beams. As can be
seen in the figure, two of the beams were subjected to a design
 Magazine of Concrete Research Fire resistance of RC beams under design
fire exposure
Gao, Dai and Teng

Beam ID Design Section, b
h: Length: Reinforcement Concrete Aggregate

fire mm
mm m cover: mma type
Top bars: mm Bottom bars: mm

Wu and Qiao (2011)

RCB1 FS-Ib 250
400 4·4 2 122 2 122 41 Siliceous
RCB2
RCB7 FS-IIb
RCB8
Dwaikat and Kodur (2009)
B2 SF 254
406 3·96 2 113 3 119 54 Calcareous
Lin et al. (1987)
B5 SDHI 229
533 8·2 4 125·4 4 122·2 62 Calcareous

a
Concrete cover to the tension rebars
b
Names assigned by the present authors as they were not available in the original paper

Table 2. Geometrical and material properties of RC beams under

design fire exposure

ISO 834
Furnace temperature
1000 ISO 834 1000 Location A (test)
Furnace temperature Location A (FE)
Location A (test) Location B (test) 250
Temperature: °C

Temperature: °C

800 Location A (FE) 250

800 Location B (FE)
Location B (test) Location C (test)
600 Location B (FE) 600 Location C (FE)
Location C (test) 400 B
Location C (FE) 400 B
400 400 C
41
C
41
200 200 A
A

0 0
0 60 120 180 240 300 360 0 60 120 180 240 300 360
Fire exposure time: min Fire exposure time: min
(a) (c)

ISO 834
Furnace temperature
1000 ISO 834 1000 Location A (test)
Furnace temperature Location A (FE)
Location B (test) 250
Temperature: °C

Temperature: °C

800 Location A (test) 800

Location A (FE) 250 Location B (FE)
Location B (test) Location C (test)
600 Location B (FE) 600 Location C (FE)
400 B
Location C (test)
400 B C
400 Location C (FE) 400 41
C
41 A
200 200
A

0 0
0 60 120 180 240 300 360 0 60 120 180 240 300 360
Fire exposure time: min Fire exposure time: min
(b) (d)

Figure 2. Temperature comparison of test results from Wu and

Qiao (2011) and FE predictions (all dimensions in mm): (a) RCB1;
(b) RCB2; (c) RCB7; (d) RCB8

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 Magazine of Concrete Research
fire with a heating stage of 60 min and a cooling stage of
180 min, while the other two beams were subjected to fires of
longer duration. More specifically, the heating stages of the
design fires closely follow the ISO 834 standard fire (ISO,
1999). For each beam, the predicted and measured tempera-
tures at three different locations (including one on a tension
steel rebar) are compared. It can be clearly seen that the
corner rebar (i.e. location A) experienced a faster temperature
rise during the heating stage as well as a faster temperature
decrease during the cooling stage, as it was subjected to heat
transfer from both the side and the bottom surfaces. Overall,
there is close agreement between the test results and the FE
predictions during the entire fire exposure.
Another series of tests on RC beams under design fires was
conducted at the Fire Research Laboratory of the Portland
Cement Association, as reported by Lin et al. (1987). A total
of six full-scale beams were tested to investigate the flexural
and shear behaviour of RC beams under fire exposure. Four of
the six beams were exposed to the ASTM E119 standard fire
(ASTM, 2015), whereas the remaining two were subjected to a
short-duration high-intensity (SDHI) design fire during which
the temperature reached a maximum value of 1860°F (1016°C)
after only 45 min of fire exposure; the cooling stage lasted for
about 3 h. The results of one beam under design fire exposure
(i.e. B5) were reported in detail by Lin et al. (1987). This beam
had a section of 239 mm
533 mm and a total length of
8·2 m, with a 6·1 m length exposed to fire. The continuous
beam was installed in the furnace so as to have an unexposed
cantilever span on one side. Figure 3 compares the predicted
and measured temperatures of both tension and compression
steel rebars. As seen in this figure, the temperature evolution of
all the rebars is well predicted except for a slight temperature
overestimation of the top layer of the compression rebars. This
slight overestimation does not influence the structural perform-
ance of the RC beam, as the mechanical properties of this top
layer of steel rebars remained almost unchanged because their
temperature was well below 300°C.
Furnace temperature
2000 1st layer (test)
1st layer (FE)
2nd layer (test)
1600 2nd layer (FE)
Temperature: °F
3rd layer (test)
3rd layer (FE)
1200
4th layer (test) 533
4th layer (FE)
800
400
0
0 60 120 180 240
Fire exposure time: min
Figure 3. Temperature comparison of test results from Lin et al.
(1987) and FE predictions (all dimensions in mm); maximum value
of 1860°F = 1016°C
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Fire resistance of RC beams under design
fire exposure
Gao, Dai and Teng
The last beam simulated for comparison was from the fire tests
conducted by Dwaikat and Kodur (2009). Their tests examined
the effects of several parameters, such as the concrete strength
(high- and normal-strength concrete), support conditions, fire
scenario and load ratio. The beams tested were all of cross-
section 254 mm
406 mm and total length 3·96 m. Figure 4
shows a comparison of measured and predicted temperatures at
the tension steel rebar and two concrete locations for beam B2,
which was exposed to a short, severe design fire (SF). The FE
approach provides close predictions of the test results except
for some differences around 100°C: the test results exhibit a
temperature plateau whereas the FE predictions do not. This
temperature plateau was possibly induced by moisture migration
from the fire-exposed surfaces to the inner parts of the beam. In
a thin layer of concrete adjacent to fire-exposed surfaces, moist-
ure can be released into the air during the heating process but, at
the same time, some moisture moves towards the inner, colder
parts of the beam as pore pressure induced flow occurs (Gao
et al., 2013, 2014a). Nevertheless, this temperature difference
has little effect on the evaluation of fire resistance because it
only occurs around 100°C and its duration is usually very short.
Figure 5 illustrates the predicted sectional temperature profiles
of beam B2 at different fire exposure times. During the first 2 h
of fire exposure, the temperature isotherms have a U-shape
because heat penetrates simultaneously through the bottom and
the two side surfaces. During the later stage of fire exposure, the
high-temperature zones spread from the two bottom corners to
the inner region as the heat in the concrete adjacent to the
exposed surfaces is released to the surrounding air. The above
temperature evolution also implies difficulty in using a sectional
analysis for predicting the mechanical response of RC beams
under design fire exposure, because it is not easy to define the
neutral axis of the beam section. The use of an accurate FE
approach for fire resistance analysis of RC beams under design
fire exposure is thus essential for reliable predictions.
Critical beam parameters
Previous studies (Gao et al., 2014b; Kodur and Dwaikat,
2011) have shown that the type of aggregate used in the
229
1200
4th Furnace temperature
3rd Location A (test)
1000 Location A (FE)
Temperature: °C
Location B (test) 254
800 Location B (FE)
2nd Location C (test)
1st 51 600 Location C (FE)
62 C
406
102
B
400 47
54
200
0
0 60 120 180 240 300
Fire exposure time: min
Figure 4. Temperature comparison of test results from Dwaikat
and Kodur (2009) and FE predictions (all dimensions in mm)
 Magazine of Concrete Research Fire resistance of RC beams under design
fire exposure
Gao, Dai and Teng

+9·076×102 +6·839×102
+8·235×102 +6·327×102
+7·394×102 +5·815×102
+6·552×102 +5·302×102
+5·711×102 +4·790×102
+4·870×102 +4·278×102
+4·029×102 +3·766×102
+3·187×102 +3·254×102
+2·346×102 +2·742×102
+1·505×102 +2·230×102
+6·635×101 +1·718×102

t = 60 min t = 120 min

+5·073×102 +4·199×102
+4·838×102 +4·038×102
+4·603×102 +3·878×102
+4·368×102 +3·717×102
+4·133×102 +3·557×102
+3·898×102 +3·397×102
+3·663×102 +3·236×102
+3·428×102 +3·076×102
+3·193×102 +2·916×102
+2·958×102 +2·755×102
+2·723×102 +2·595×102

t = 180 min t = 240 min

+3·728×102
+3·539×102
+3·350×102
+3·161×102
+2·972×102
+2·783×102
+2·594×102
+2·405×102
+2·216×102
+2·027×102
+1·838×102

t = 300 min

Figure 5. Cross-sectional temperature distributions (in °C) in

beam tested by Dwaikat and Kodur (2009) at different design fire
exposure times

concrete, beam section (b
h), span-to-depth ratio (l/d), load rebars (ratio of total area of corner tension rebars to total area
ratio (γ), concrete cover depth (c), reinforcement ratio of of tension rebars, Asc/Ast) have significant effects on the fire
tension steel rebars (ratio of total area of tension rebars to that resistance of RC beams under standard fire exposure. Explicit
of the section) (ρs) and the distribution ratio of tension steel design equations have also been proposed for predicting the

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 Magazine of Concrete Research Fire resistance of RC beams under design
fire exposure
Gao, Dai and Teng

Design fire Fuel load per Opening Thermal inertia: Maximum Total duration: min Decay rate:
area: MJ/m2 factor: m1/2 J/m2.s1/2.K temperature, Tmax: °C °C/min

Long cool 500 0·02 2000 897 507·2 2·9

Short hot 800 0·12 1200 1336 121·0 19·4

Table 3. Summary of design fires in Figure 6

fire resistance of RC beams under standard fire exposure (Gao 1400

et al., 2014b). However, it remains unclear whether these same
parameters are similarly important for the fire resistance of 1200
RC beams under design fire exposure. Therefore, a parametric
1000 Tmax ISO 834
FE study was conducted to identify the critical beam par- Long cool fire
Temperature: °C
ameters for design fire exposure. Short hot fire
800

Table 1 summarises the information of the RC beams examined 600 1 min

in the parametric study. The effects of different combinations of
beam parameters on the fire resistance of RC beams were inves-
tigated for three fire scenarios – the ISO 834 standard fire (ISO,
1999), a typical short hot design fire and a typical long cool
design fire; details of the design fires are given in Table 3.
Figure 6 compares the time–temperature curves of these three
fires, in which the temperatures of the two design fires were
determined using Equations 1–5 for different compartmental
characteristics. The concrete cover depth used in the parametric
study was the clear distance from the side and the bottom sur-
faces to the exterior surface of tension steel reinforcement. For
all simulated RC beams, the compressive strength of concrete
and the yield stress of steel rebars at ambient temperature were
30 MPa and 375 MPa, respectively; the latter approximates
closely the measured yield stress of the HRB 335 steel bars com-
monly used in China. These two parameters have negligible
effects on the fire resistance of normal-strength concrete beams
(Kodur and Dwaikat, 2011; Kodur and Hatinger, 2011) and
therefore they were assumed to be constant in this parametric
study. For the simulated RC beams, the fire resistance period
was reached when (BSI, 1987; ISO, 1999)
& the maximum midspan deflection of the beam exceeded
l/20 or
& the rate of midspan deflection exceeded l 2/9000h and the
deflection was larger than l/30, where l is the length of the
beam and h is the beam depth, both in millimetres
In order to investigate the effects of various parameters in
a design fire, the fire resistance period of RC beams exposed
to design fire was normalised by the corresponding value
under standard fire exposure. Figure 7 shows the relationships
between the normalised fire resistance period and the various
parameters. It is very clear that, apart from the concrete cover
depth, all the other parameters had a negligible effect on the
normalised fire resistance period. This is mainly because the
concrete cover depth interacts with the fire scenario to affect
the temperature evolution of steel reinforcement, which has
Decay rate
400
200 Total duration
0
0 100 200 300 400 500
Fire exposure time: min
Figure 6. Time–temperature curves of ISO 834 standard fire (ISO,
1999) and two typical design fires
been demonstrated to be the most important factor for the fire
response of RC beams (e.g. Lin et al., 1987). It should be
noted that some other factors, such as concrete spalling and
the axial and rotational restraint conditions of beams, have
also been found to affect the fire resistance of RC beams (Choi
and Shin, 2011; Dwaikat and Kodur, 2009; Wu and Lu, 2009).
However, the effect of concrete spalling is beyond the scope of
the present study, since how it should be modelled is a matter
of uncertainty and controversy (Gao et al., 2013; Huang et al.,
2008). Besides, concrete spalling is a significant issue for
high-strength concrete (Ko et al., 2011; Wu et al., 2013; Zheng
et al., 2014) while the present study is concerned with RC
beams of normal-strength concrete. The restraint conditions of
an RC beam are very complicated and may change during fire
exposure as a result of adjacent column deformations in a real
fire scenario. Therefore, only simply supported RC beams are
considered in the present FE parametric study as a simple and
conservative approximation, as has been done by many other
researchers (e.g. Capua and Mari, 2007; Choi and Shin, 2011;
El-Fitiany and Youssef, 2009; Kodur and Dwaikat, 2011).
Design approach
Energy-based time equivalence method
As mentioned in the literature review presented earlier, most
existing methods and empirical formulas for the time

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 Magazine of Concrete Research Fire resistance of RC beams under design
fire exposure
Gao, Dai and Teng

2·0 2·0
Normalised fire resistance period

1·5 1·5

Short hot fire Short hot fire

1·0 1·0
Long cool fire Long cool fire

0·5 0·5

Siliceous Calcareous
0 0
Aggregate type 6 10 14 18
Span-to-depth ratio
(a) (b)

2·0 2·0
Normalised fire resistance period

1·5 1·5

Short hot fire Short hot fire

1·0 1·0
Long cool fire Long cool fire

0·5 0·5

0 0
20 30 40 50 0·3 0·9 1·2 1·5 2·4
Concrete cover depth: mm Reinforcement ratio of tension rebars: %
(c) (d)

2·0 2·0
Normalised fire resistance period

1·5 1·5

Short hot fire Short hot fire

1·0 1·0
Long cool fire Long cool fire

0·5 0·5

0 0
0·1 0·3 0·5 0·7 0·9 0·2 0·4 0·6 0·8 1·0
Load ratio, γ Area of corner rebars/total area of tension rebars, Asc /Ast
(e) (f)

Figure 7. Effect of beam parameters on normalised fire resistance tensile reinforcement ratio; (e) effect of load ratio; (f) effect of
period: (a) effect of aggregate type of concrete; (b) effect of span- distribution of tension steel rebars
to-depth ratio; (c) effect of concrete cover depth; (d) effect of

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 Magazine of Concrete Research
equivalence of different fires were proposed for protected steel
members and are not applicable to RC beams. Kodur et al.
(2010) proposed an equal-energy method to predict the time
equivalent of RC beams under design fire exposure. This
method relates the fire severity to the amount of energy trans-
ferred to the beam. That is, two fires are deemed to have the
same severity if the same amount of energy is absorbed by the
RC beam. The amount of energy includes heat transfer via
both thermal convection and thermal radiation through the
fire-exposed surfaces and is given by
ð ð


7: E ¼ ðqc þ qr ÞA dt ¼ hc ðTf  Tc Þ þ σε Tf4  Tc4 A dt
where E is the total energy, A is the total area of fire-exposed
surfaces of the beam, qc and qr are the convective heat flux
and radiative heat flux, respectively, hc is the convective
heat transfer coefficient, Tf and Tc are the temperature of the
fire and that of the fire-exposed surfaces, respectively, σ is the
Stefan–Boltzmann constant (5·67
10−8 W/m2 · K4) and ε is
the emissivity of concrete. According to EN 1991-1-2 (CEN,
2002), an emissivity value of 0·8 and a convective heat transfer
coefficient of 25 W/ m2 · K were used in the present study.
As the temperature of the exposed surface (Tc) is generally
close to the fire temperature (Tf ), the radiative heat flux can be
approximated as (Kodur et al., 2010)



qr ¼ σε Tf4  Tc4 ¼ σε Tf2 þ Tc2 ðTf þ Tc ÞðTf  Tc Þ
8:
¼ 4σεTf3 ðTf  Tc Þ
By assuming Tf − Tc = αTf (Kodur et al., 2010), Equation 7 can
thus be rewritten as
ð ð


9: E ¼ ðqc þ qr ÞA dt ¼ αA 4σεTf4 þ hc Tf dt
Kodur et al. (2010) employed the equal-energy method to
predict the time equivalent of an RC beam exposed to design
fire, so the fire safety of the beam was evaluated by comparing
the predicted time equivalent (i.e. te(exact)) with the standard
fire resistance period (i.e. Rstandard). In the present paper, the
equal-energy method is directly employed to predict the fire
resistance period of an RC beam under design fire exposure
based on the assumption that the standard fire resistance
period (Rstandard) is already known (e.g. calculated using the
design equations proposed by Gao et al. (2014b)). More
specifically, the total amount of energy absorbed by an RC
beam under standard fire exposure before failure is first evalu-
ated; the time at which the same beam absorbs the same
amount of energy under design fire exposure is referred to as
the energy-based fire resistance period of the beam under
design fire exposure (Renergy). Therefore, this fire resistance
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Fire resistance of RC beams under design
fire exposure
Gao, Dai and Teng
2·5
ISO 834
Energy per area, E/αA: × 108 W/m2
Long cool fire
2·0
1·5
1·0
RStandard
0·5
REnergy
0
0 100 200 300 400
Fire exposure time: min
Figure 8. Equal-energy method for time equivalence
period can be determined by comparing the amounts of
energy calculated using the temperature–time curves of the
standard and the design fires and Equation 9.
Figure 8 shows the amounts of absorbed energy per area
(E/αA) by an RC beam as a function of fire exposure time
for the ISO 834 standard fire (ISO, 1999) and the long cool
fire. The long cool fire is defined by Equations 1–5 using
the following parameters: qt,d = 500 MJ/m2, O = 0·02 m1/2 and
I = 2000 J/m2 · s1/2.K (see Table 3). It can be seen that the
amounts of energy absorbed by an RC beam during a 120 min
standard fire and a 195 min design fire are approximately the
same, which means that the energy-based fire resistance period
(i.e. Renergy) of a 120 min standard fire is about 195 min for
the RC beam exposed to the specific design fire. In the mean-
time, it is seen that the fire severity of a 240 min standard fire
can never be reached by this particular design fire based on
the equal-energy method. In other words, if an RC beam has a
240 min fire resistance period under the ISO 834 standard fire
exposure, the same beam will not fail during this specific
design fire.
Correction factor for the energy-based time
equivalence method
To investigate the applicability of the energy-based time equiv-
alence method to the fire-resistance prediction of RC beams, a
parametric FE study was conducted on four groups of RC
beams having four different concrete cover depths. Each group
was subjected to 24 different design fires. As only the effect of
concrete cover depth depends significantly on the fire scenario,
all the other parameters were fixed at the reference values
(shown as the values in bold in Table 1). A higher load ratio of
0·7 was employed in the parametric study to ensure that
most of the beams analysed would fail under design fire
exposure. These 24 design fires were determined according to
 Magazine of Concrete Research Fire resistance of RC beams under design
fire exposure
Gao, Dai and Teng

Parameter Design Fuel load per Opening Thermal inertia: Maximum Time at Total Decay rate:
fire area: MJ/m2 factor: m1/2 J/m2.s1/2.K temperature, Tmax: °C Tmax: min duration: min °C/min

Fuel load
DF-F1 50 0·05 1500 873 15·0 81·6 13·1
DF-F2 250 0·05 1500 1018 39·0 121·6 12·3
DF-F3 500 0·05 1500 1120 78·0 203·7 8·9
DF-F4 750 0·05 1500 1183 117 332·0 5·5
DF-F5 1000 0·05 1500 1228 156 390·3 5·2
Opening factor
DF-O1 500 0·02 1500 985 195 492·0 3·3
DF-O2 500 0·03 1500 1045 130 387·3 4·1
DF-O3 500 0·04 1500 1087 97·5 266·1 6·4
DF-O4 500 0·05 1500 1120 78·0 203·7 8·9
DF-O5 500 0·06 1500 1148 65·0 169·3 11·0
DF-O6 500 0·07 1500 1172 55·7 147·0 12·9
DF-O7 500 0·08 1500 1194 48·8 131·0 14·5
DF-O8 500 0·09 1500 1212 43·3 119·0 16·0
DF-O9 500 0·10 1500 1228 39·0 109·5 17·4
DF-O10 500 0·12 1500 1255 32·5 95·4 20·0
DF-O11 500 0·16 1500 1292 24·4 79·5 23·4
DF-O12 500 0·2 1500 1313 19·5 69·6 26·2
Thermal inertia
DF-T1 500 0·05 200 1345 78·0 133·1 24·4
DF-T2 500 0·05 400 1345 78·0 155·9 17·3
DF-T3 500 0·05 600 1338 78·0 172·9 14·1
DF-T4 500 0·05 800 1302 78·0 184·6 12·2
DF-T5 500 0·05 1000 1246 78·0 192·1 10·9
DF-T6 500 0·05 1200 1190 78·0 197·4 10·0
DF-T7 500 0·05 1500 1120 78·0 203·7 8·9
DF-T8 500 0·05 1750 1074 78·0 208·2 8·3
DF-T9 500 0·05 2000 1035 78·0 212·2 7·7

Table 4. Summary of fire curve characteristics of design fires

(values in bold are reference values for the parametric study)

the above-mentioned parametric fire curve (i.e. Equations 1–5).
As a result, the parametric FE study included 96 numerical
beams in total. Table 4 summarises the values of the
parameters that were used to generate the design fires as well
as the characteristics of the time–temperature curves used
in the FE parametric study. The following three influential
parameters were considered over a wide range of values
(CEN, 2002): 50 ≤ qt,d ≤ 1000 MJ/m2, 0·02 ≤ O ≤ 0·2 m1/2 and
200 ≤ I ≤ 2000 J/m2 · s1/2 · K. Figures 9(a)–9(c) illustrate the
time–temperature curves of the design fires in comparison with
that of the ISO 834 standard fire (ISO, 1999). These figures
reflect the effects of the fuel load, the opening factor and the
thermal inertia of the boundary of enclosure on the time–
temperature curves of design fires, respectively.
thermal inertia of the boundary of enclosure) on the tempera-
ture responses of the central tension rebar and the midspan
deflections of RC beams under design fire exposure. The
deflection limit at which failure is reached is also provided in
the figures for reference. It is obvious that the rebar tempera-
tures are affected by all the compartmental characteristics
(Figures 10(a)–12(a)), while the fire resistance period (i.e. the
exposure time when reaching the deflection limit) is only influ-
enced by the opening factor and the thermal inertia of the
boundary of enclosure (Figures 11(b) and 12(b)) rather than
the fuel load (Figure 10(b)). In other words, although the
design fire curves with different fuel loads lead to different
maximum temperatures for different design fires (Figure 9(a)),
they have no effect on the fire resistance periods of RC beams.

Figures 10–12 illustrate the effects of different compartmental As stated earlier, fire severity depends not only on the energy
characteristics (i.e. the fuel load, the opening factor and the absorbed by the RC beam but also on some other factors such

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 Magazine of Concrete Research Fire resistance of RC beams under design
fire exposure
Gao, Dai and Teng

1400 1200

1200
1000
ISO 834

Rebar temperature: °C
1000 DF-F1
Temperature: °C

ISO 834 800 DF-F2

800 DF-F1 DF-F3
DF-F2 600 DF-F4
600 DF-F3 DF-F5
DF-F4 400
400 DF-F5

200 200

0
0 100 200 300 400 500 0
0 100 200 300 400 500
Fire exposure time: min
Fire exposure time: min
(a)
(a)
1400
ISO 834 250
ISO 834
1200 DF-O1
Deflection limit DF-F1
DF-O2
200 DF-F2
1000 DF-O3
Midspan deflection: mm
Temperature: °C

DF-O4 DF-F3
800 DF-O5 DF-F4
150
DF-O6 DF-F5
600 DF-O7
DF-O8 100
400 DF-O9
DF-O10
200 DF-O11 50
DF-O12
0
0 100 200 300 400 500 0
Fire exposure time: min 0 50 100 150 200 250
(b) Fire exposure time: min
(b)
1400
Figure 10. Effect of fuel load on the thermal and mechanical
1200
responses of RC beams: (a) temperature responses of the central
ISO 834
1000 DF-T1 tension rebar (c = 20 mm); (b) midspan deflection–time curves
Temperature: °C

DF-T2 (c = 20 mm)
800 DF-T3
DF-T4
600 DF-T5 of an RC beam under design fire exposure (i.e. Rdesign), which
DF-T6
400 is formulated as a function of concrete cover depth and com-
DF-T7
DF-T8 partmental characteristics. In Equation 10, the effect of fuel
200 DF-T9 load is ignored.

0 Rdesign 1
0 100 200 300 400 500 10: χ¼ ¼  ϕðcÞ  F ðOÞ  ψ ðI Þ
Fire exposure time: min Renergy γ0
(c)
where ϕ(c) accounts for the effect of concrete cover depth and
Figure 9. Design fires used in the FE parametric study: (a) effect
F(O) and ψ(I) account for the effects of the opening factor and
of fuel load per area; (b) effect of opening factor; (c) effect of
the thermal inertia of the boundary of enclosure, respectively.
thermal inertia
γ0 is a reference value and is determined by assuming O = 0·05
and I = 1500 as follows
as concrete cover depth and compartmental characteristics.
A correction factor is therefore proposed here (Equation 10) to 11: γ0 ¼ F ð005Þ  ψ ð1500Þ
provide more accurate estimates for the fire resistance period

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 Magazine of Concrete Research Fire resistance of RC beams under design
fire exposure
Gao, Dai and Teng

1200 1200
ISO 834
DF-O1
1000 1000 ISO 834
DF-O2

Rebar temperature: °C
Rebar temperature: °C

DF-O3 DF-T1
800 DF-O4 800 DF-T2
DF-O5 DF-T3
DF-O6 600 DF-T4
600 DF-T5
DF-O7
DF-O8 DF-T6
400 400 DF-T7
DF-O9
DF-O10 DF-T8
200 DF-O11 200 DF-T9
DF-O12
0 0
0 100 200 300 400 500 0 100 200 300 400 500
Fire exposure time: min Fire exposure time: min
(a) (a)

250 250
ISO 834
Deflection limit ISO 834
Deflection limit DF-O1
200 DF-T1
Midspan deflection: mm

Midspan deflection: mm

200 DF-O2
DF-O3 DF-T2
DF-O4 DF-T3
150 DF-T4
150 DF-O5
DF-O6 DF-T5
DF-O7 100 DF-T6
100 DF-T7
DF-O8
DF-O9 DF-T8
DF-O10 50 DF-T9
50
DF-O11
DF-O12 0
0 0 20 40 60 80 100
0 50 400 150 200 250
Fire exposure time: min
Fire exposure time: min (b)
(b)
Figure 12. Effect of thermal inertia of boundary of enclosure
Figure 11. Effect of opening factor on the thermal and
on the thermal and mechanical responses of RC beams:
mechanical responses of RC beams: (a) temperature responses of
(a) temperature responses of the central tension rebar
the central tension rebar (c = 50 mm); (b) midspan deflection–time
(c = 40 mm); (b) midspan deflection–time curves (c = 40 mm)
curves (c = 50 mm)

Through a least-squares regression analysis of the fire resist-

13b: ω2 ¼ 137  139
102 c þ 173
103 c2
ance data of the 82 beams, the following equations were found
to give a proper description of the relationship between the
Rdesign/Renergy ratio and the significant parameters.
Figures 13–15 show how the compartmental characteristics
1 3 affect the Rdesign/Renergy ratio. In these figures, the dashed lines
12a: ϕðcÞ ¼ 994
10 þ 188
10 c
represent the regression results while the discrete symbols rep-
resent the FE results. It can be seen that the proposed equa-
tions properly capture the effects of all the critical parameters.

12b: F ðOÞ ¼ ω1 þ ω2 O
Validation of the design approach
To demonstrate the validity of the proposed equation for
the correction factor, the analytical fire resistance periods
for beams under design fire exposure (tdesign) predicted by
12c: ψ ðI Þ ¼ 159  627
104 I þ 169
107 I 2
Equation 10, in which tenergy is converted from the fire resist-
ance period under standard fire exposure (i.e. Rstandard, ob-
where tained from the FE results herein) based on the equal-energy
method, are compared with the fire resistance periods from the
13a: ω1 ¼ 989
101  114
103 c  370
105 c2 FE parametric study in Figure 16. The average ratio between
the analytical prediction and the FE result is 1·01, while the

15
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 Magazine of Concrete Research Fire resistance of RC beams under design
fire exposure
Gao, Dai and Teng

1·2 200
+10%
Prediction/FE results
Mean = 1·01

Analytical prediction: min

1·1 150 CoV = 3·98%
–10%
tdesign/tenergy

1·0 qt,d = 250 mJ/m2 100

qt,d = 500 mJ/m2

qt,d = 750 mJ/m2 50
0·9
qt,d = 1000 mJ/m2
Proposed formuIa
0·8 0
20 30 40 50 0 50 100 150 200
FE result: min
Concrete cover depth, c: mm

Figure 16. Comparison of fire resistance predictions for RC

Figure 13. Variation of Rdesign/Renergy ratio with fuel load
beams under design fire exposure

1·5
coefficient of variation (CoV) is 3·98%. This excellent agree-
1·4
ment is expected, as the proposed equation for the correction
1·3 factor was derived from the regression analysis of the FE
results. In view of this fact, FE analyses were conducted on a
tdesign/tenergy

1·2 further 64 RC beams, whose parameters are summarised in

Table 5. The design fires considered in these new FE analyses
1·1
c = 20 mm were different from those adopted in the preceding FE para-
1·0 c = 30 mm metric study, as shown in Figure 17 and Table 6, in which
c = 40 mm the thermal inertias of the boundary of enclosure were
0·9 c = 50 mm assumed to have five specific values (i.e. 1900, 1520, 931, 742,
Proposed formuIa and 400 J/m2.s1/2.K), representing the thermal properties of
0·8
0 0·05 0·10 0·15 0·20 0·25 wall lining materials made of normal concrete, brick, gypsum
Opening factor, O: m12 board, lightweight concrete and plaster board, respectively
(Feasey and Buchanan, 2002; Harmathy and Mehaffey, 1982).
Figure 14. Variation of Rdesign/Renergy ratio with opening factor It should be noted that only numerical results were used for
validation of the proposed design approach due to a lack of
test data. Only a few tests have been conducted on RC beams
1·8 exposed to design fire (Dwaikat and Kodur, 2009; Lin et al.,
c = 20 mm
1987; Wu and Qiao, 2011), and none of them reached the
c = 30 mm
1·6 failure state based on either the deflection limit or deflection
c = 40 mm
rate limit.
c = 50 mm
Proposed formuIa
tdesign/tenergy

1·4
Figure 18 shows a comparison of the analytical fire resistance
periods and the FE results of the 64 new RC beams under
1·2 design fire exposures. In this figure, the fire resistance periods
of RC beams under standard fire exposure (i.e. Rstandard), were
calculated using the design equations proposed by Gao et al.
1·0
(2014b) (more details of the design equations are provided in
the Appendix). They were converted to Renergy values based
0·8 on the equal-energy method and then Rdesign based on
0 500 1000 1500 2000
Equation 10. Overall, there is a close agreement between the
Thermal inertia, l: J/m2.S1/2.K
analytical predictions and the FE results, further demonstrat-
Figure 15. Variation of Rdesign/Renergy ratio with thermal inertia of ing the validity of the proposed approach for predicting the
boundary of enclosure fire resistance of RC beams under design fire exposure.
Nevertheless, it should be noted that the applicability of

16
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 Magazine of Concrete Research Fire resistance of RC beams under design
fire exposure
Gao, Dai and Teng

Aggregate type Section, b
h : mm
mm l/h c: mm ρs: % γ Asc/Ast Fire curve

Siliceous 250
250 16 20 1·2 0·5 2/3 DF-V1 – DF-V8

30
40 0·7
50

Table 5. FE parametric study for validation of proposed design

approach

1400
DF-V1 Design Fuel load per Opening Thermal inertia:
1200 DF-V2 fire area: MJ/m2 factor: m1/2 J/m2.s1/2.K
DF-V3
DF-V4 DF-V1 600 0·06 1900
1000
Temperature: °C

DF-V5 DF-V2 600 0·06 1520

800 DF-V6 DF-V3 600 0·06 931
DF-V7 DF-V4 600 0·06 742
600 DF-V8 DF-V5 600 0·06 400
DF-V6 600 0·036 1900
400 DF-V7 600 0·036 931
DF-V8 600 0·036 400
200

Table 6. Summary of design fires used for verification of

0
0 100 200 300 400 500 proposed design approach
Fire exposure time: min

Figure 17. Time–temperature curves of design fires employed for
verification of proposed design approach
Equation 10 is limited to the following parametric ranges,
which in fact include almost all possible compartmental char-
acteristics in reality: 0·02 ≤ O ≤ 0·2 m1/2, 50 ≤ qt,d ≤ 1000 MJ/m2
and 200 ≤ I ≤ 2000 J/m2 · s1/2 · K.
Design example
An example is now provided to further illustrate the applica-
bility of the proposed design approach through an example RC
beam, which has a concrete cover of 40 mm and a load ratio
of 0·5. The other geometrical and material properties of the
RC beam are the same as the beams considered in the vali-
dation process, as indicated in Table 5. The beam is assumed
to be exposed to design fire DF-V1 with a total duration of
205·5 min, as shown in Figure 17. The whole process for deter-
mining the fire resistance period of an RC beam under the
design fire exposure includes the following three steps.
& Determine the fire resistance period of the RC beam under
standard fire exposure (Rstandard) using the design equations
proposed by Gao et al. (2014b) (more details are given in
the Appendix).
& Compare the cumulative energy of the standard fire at the
failure time (Rstandard) and the corresponding cumulative
energy of the design fire DF-V1 to find the energy-based
fire resistance period (Renergy) (i.e. the equal-energy
method).
& Calculate the correction factor using Equation 10 and
determine the precise fire resistance period of the RC beam
exposed to design fire DF-V1 (Rdesign).
In practical design, an initial step is needed to ascertain the
time–temperature curve of the design fire scenario using the
compartmental characteristics of the building where the RC
beam is located. This step is omitted in the present study as
the design fire DF-V1 is directly assumed.
In this case study, Rstandard is determined using the design
equations proposed by Gao et al. (2014b), as shown in the
Appendix, and the obtained value is 120·4 min. Renergy is
evaluated using the equal-energy method by a step-by-step
procedure as illustrated in Table 7. It is seen that Renergy is
between 99·0 min and 99·5 min, and the exact value is deter-
mined as 99·1 min through linear interpolation of the cumulat-
ive energy of the design fire between these two time steps and
the cumulative energy of the standard fire at failure. Thus, the
fire resistance period of the RC beam exposed to design fire
DF-V1 can be calculated as
1
14: Rdesign ¼ χ  Renergy ¼  ϕðcÞ  F ðOÞ  ψ ðI Þ  Renergy
γ0

17
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 Magazine of Concrete Research Fire resistance of RC beams under design
fire exposure
Gao, Dai and Teng

200 Conclusions
+10% This paper has detailed the development of a new design
Prediction/FE results
Mean = 1·06
approach for predicting the fire resistance of RC beams under
150 design fire exposure. Based on the results and discussions pre-
Analytical prediction: min

CoV = 4·88%
–10% sented in the paper, the following conclusions can be drawn.

100 (a) Existing time equivalence methods and empirical for-

50
0
0 50 100
FE results: min
Figure 18. Validation of fire resistance prediction using additional
FE results
In Equation 14, the correction factor can be calculated using
γ0 = 1·099, ϕ(c) = 1·070, F(O) = 1·099 and ψ(I ) = 1·013. Thus,
Rdesign is determined to be 107·4 min. The accurate FE result
of the fire resistance period for the RC beam exposed to design
fire DF-V1 was 102·6 min, and thus the difference between the
FE result and the analytical prediction using the proposed
time design approach is less than 5%.
mulas in the literature are mostly for the fire resistance
design of protected steel members and are not applicable
to RC beams.
(b) The effect of concrete cover depth on the fire resistance
period of RC beams strongly depends on the fire scenario.
(c) The opening factor and the thermal inertia of the
150 200 boundary of enclosure have significant effects on the fire
resistance period of RC beams, but the fuel load has no
effect.
(d) Use of the energy-based time equivalence method in
combination with a correction factor offers a reasonably
reliable approach for predicting the fire resistance period
of RC beams under design fire exposure.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful for financial support from
the National Basic Research Program of China (the 973
Program) (project 2012CB026201) and the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (projects 51408521 and

Time Time: Standard fire Design fire Difference between

step min cumulative energy of
Tf: °C Heat flux at each Cumulative Tf: °C Heat flux at each Cumulative
design fire at different
time step calculated energy time step calculated energy
times and that of standard
using Equation 9 using Equation 9
fire at the failure time
(E/αA): W/m2 (E/αA): W/m2

1 0 20 8668·7 0 20 8668·7 0 −48373224·0

2 0·5 261·1 28143·6 9203·1 217·5 22783·8 7863·1 −48365360·9
3 1 349·2 42780·5 26934·1 358·6 44693·8 24732·5 −48348491·5
4 1·5 404·3 55154·6 51417·8 460·1 70770·4 53598·6 −48319625·5
5 2 444·5 66069·1 81723·8 533·7 97081·2 95561·5 −48277662·6
6 2·5 476·2 75932·4 117224·1 587·9 121242·1 150142·3 −48223081·7
— — — — — — — — —
198 98·5 1019·5 538893·1 36017267·1 926·1 405300·1 48132523·6 −240700·4
199 99 1020·3 540100·8 36287015·6 921·8 399791·1 48333796·4 −39427·6
200 99·5 1021·0 541304·5 36557366·9 917·4 394340·6 48532329·3 159105·3
201 100 1021·8 542504·2 36828319·1 913·1 388948·1 48728151·5 354927·5
— — — — — — — — —
239 119 1047·8 585433·4 47551530·3 748·3 223032·8 54427799·1 —
240 119·5 1048·4 586499·6 47844513·5 743·9 219590·9 54538455·0 —
241 120 1049·0 587562·9 48138029·2 739·6 216191·3 54647400·5 —
242 120·4 1049·5 588411·4 48373224·0 736·1 213501·9 54733339·2 —

Table 7. Step-by-step procedure for determining REnergy using the

equal-energy method

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 Magazine of Concrete Research Fire resistance of RC beams under design
fire exposure
Gao, Dai and Teng

51478406). They are also grateful for a Postdoctoral
Fellowship awarded to the first author by the Faculty of
Construction and Environment of The Hong Kong
Polytechnic University.
a3 = 1·17
103 and a4 = −6·13
102. The constants b0, b1,
c0 and c1 are 3·89
10−1, 2·01, 3·80
10−1 and 6·20
10−1,
respectively, and μag = 1 · 0 is adopted for RC beams made
of calcareous or aggregate type of concrete. ξ1 and ξ2 in
Equation 18 are functions of concrete cover depth, given by

Appendix: Design equations for standard

21: ξ 1 ¼ 154  681
103 c
fire exposure and example calculations

A.1 Design equations for standard fire exposure

(Gao et al., 2014b)
The fire resistance period of an RC beam under standard fire 22: ξ 2 ¼ 791
101 þ 973
103 c
exposure can be evaluated using the general equation
  ψ0, ψ1 and ψ2 in Equation 19 are functions of the span-
Asc l
Rstandard γ; c; ; ; ρs ; b; μag to-depth ratio and are
Ast h
15:    
Asc l    2
¼ φðγÞ  ωðcÞ  ξ  ψ ; ρs  ϕðbÞ  μag l l
Ast h 23: ψ 0 ¼ 178  103
101 þ 339
103
h h

where Rstandard is the fire resistance period (in min), φ(γ)

accounts for the effect of load ratio, ω(c) accounts for the
effect of concrete cover depth, ξ(Asc/Ast) accounts for the effect    2
l l
of distribution ratio of tension rebars, ψ(l/h, ρs) accounts for 24: ψ 1 ¼ 680  164
101 þ 761
103
h h
the effect of span-to-depth ratio for a given tensile reinforce-
ment ratio and ϕ(b) and μag account for the effects of beam
width and the type of concrete aggregate, respectively.

   2
According to Gao et al. (2014b), the following equations l l
describe the effects of various factors well.
25: ψ 2 ¼ 115
101 þ436
102 227
103
h h

16: φðγÞ ¼ a1 þ a2 γ þ a3 γ2 þ a4 γ3

17: ωðcÞ ¼ b0 þ b1 c A.2 Calculations for an example RC beam

The effect of the load ratio is given by

φðγÞ ¼ 292
102  815
102
05 þ 117
103
052

   
Asc Asc  613
102
053 ¼ 9989
18: ξ ¼ ξ1 þ ξ2
Ast Ast

The effect of concrete cover depth is given by

 
l ωðcÞ ¼ 389
101 þ 201
04 ¼ 1193
19: ψ ;ρ ¼ ψ 0 þ ψ 1 ρ þ ψ 2 ρ2
h s

The effect of the distribution ratio of tension rebars is given by

   
b Asc
20: ϕðbÞ ¼ c0 þ c1 ξ ¼ ð154  681
103
04Þ
250 Ast
þ ð791
101 þ 973
103
04Þ
ð2=3Þ
where a1, a2, a3 and a4 are constants, and least-squares re- ¼ 1011
gression analysis suggests that a1 = 2·92
102, a2 = −8·15
102,

19
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 Magazine of Concrete Research
The effect of the span-to-depth ratio is
 
l
 London, UK.
ψ ; ρs ¼ 178103
101
16 þ 339
103
162
h BSI (1987) BS 476-20: Fire tests on building materials and


þ 680  164
101
16 þ 761
103
162
ð12Þ


þ 115
101 þ 436
102
16227
103
162

2

12 ¼ 09996
The effect of beam width is
ϕðbÞ ¼ 380
101 þ 620
101
ð250=250Þ2 ¼ 1000
The effect of type of concrete aggregate is
μag ¼ 10
The fire resistance period of the RC beam under standard fire
exposure is therefore
   
Asc l European Committee for Standardization, Brussels,
Rstandard ¼ φðγÞ  ωðcÞ  ξ  ψ ; ρs  ϕðbÞ  μag
Ast h Belgium.
¼ 1204 min
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