FP7-People-Marie Curie IFF 328993
steel connections, finite element, composite floor, concrete slab, fire, elevated temperatures
CONFIRE: Steel Connections in Composite Floor Systems
The overall research goal is to investigate and improve the structural fire safety in Europe through better prediction and performance of buildings, bridges and other infrastructures in large urban areas by focusing the fundamental behavior of connections in a composite structural frame and by improving the robustness of connections against fire conditions. Fire represents one of the most severe environmental hazards for the built infrastructure and it is a particularly dangerous event caused by many other hazards such as earthquake, impact and blast. The Researcher Dr. Selamet has the necessary expertise and technical skills to achieve the objectives by conducting experiments and state-of-the-art numerical (computational) analyses on existing structures such as buildings, bridges, viaducts, and highway overpasses. The results of this research will greatly contribute to the existing structural fire research and will impact the design of new structures for better fire performance in large cities in Europe. The specific outcomes, which are related to this goal, are the fundamental knowledge on the fire performance of structures, especially the fire resilience of structural connections, which provide integrity and stability to the global structure. Therefore, the results of this research intend to mitigate the natural hazard risks, which is one of the funded activities in ‘Environment European Research Area’ and it is stated as one of the priorities of FP7 2012 call for proposals.
1- Assess and evaluate the fire performance of existing 40-story and taller high-rise buildings, major viaducts and the two suspension bridges on Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul: Collect and report technical design parameters for structural fire safety such as fire protection materials, flammable objects (fire fuel), window and door openings, composite floor systems, beam, column and connection design.
2- Improve the performance-based fire resistance of steel connections in a composite substructure with realistic gravity loading, fire and boundary conditions by making use of computational mechanics in high-performance parallel computers. Evaluate the catenary action and other beneficial effects of concrete deck (slab) in floor systems under fire.
3- Validate the application of the robust composite floor and connection design in conducting several fire tests of composite substructures. Illustrate and demonstrate, for several buildings and/or bridges in recent development, the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of the new design.
4- Develop a structural fire engineering curriculum; educate and train undergraduate and graduate students; disseminate the results to the public. Derive innovative design equations and simplified guidelines for fire performance of structures in a suitable form for reference by relevant Eurocode standards.
Management Committee Member: COST IFER Integrated Fire Engineering and Response
Technical Committee Member: ASCE/SEI Fire Protection Committee
ABET 2015 Representative of the Department of Civil Engineering at Bogazici University (Host Institution)
Local Organizing Committee Member: PROHITECH 2014 2nd International Conference Protection of Historical Constructions
Academic Member: Turkish Steel Institute (TUCSA)
Technical Committee Member: Turkish Fire Committee (TK3)
Scientific Committee Member: ASFE 2015 Applications of Structural Fire Engineering
(1) Integration of computational modeling into the curriculum: The commercial finite element software ABAQUS is intensively used in Dr. Selamet’s “CE549 Special Topics: Structural Fire Safety Theory and Applications” Graduate Course in homework and project assignments.
(2) Initiatives of the first university-based fire testing facility: Dr. Selamet invited the CEO Ilker Ibik (ilker.ibik@efectis.com) of Efectis-Era Fire Laboratory in Kocaeli, Turkey to give a seminar on the cost estimate of fire testing facility construction. This initiative is still in the early phases.
(3) Graduate level courses in structural fire safety: CE549 Special Topics: Structural Fire Safety Theory and Applications is taught by Dr. Selamet in Fall 2013 (5 graduate students) and Fall 2014 (6 graduate students).
(4) Dissemination of results to the scientific community and general public / mobility visits:
- An academic website (http://www.ce.boun.edu.tr/selamet) is created, which currently holds all the relevant information about the Marie Curie IFF Research Project as well as other research funding and academic activities of Dr. Selamet.
- A structural fire research group at Bogazici University is formed “BOUNFIRE”, which currently consists of 3 graduate and 2 undergraduate students.
- Dr. Selamet attended and presented at several international conferences and technical committee meetings. The list is as the following in the chronological order:
April 19-20 2013: ASFE Applications of Structural Fire Engineering / Prague, Czech Republic
April 19-20 2013: COST IFER MC/WG Meeting / Prague, Czech Republic
May 2-4 2013: ASCE Structures Congress / Pittsburgh PA, USA
September 2-4 2013: SEMC Structural Engineering, Mechanics and Computation / Cape Town, South Africa
September 16-18 2013: Invitation as University Ambassador of International Relations / Researcher to Nanyang Technical University (NTU) / Singapore
February 20-21 2014: COST IFER MC/WG Meeting / Krakow, Poland
April 3-5 2014: ASCE/SEI Fire Protection Committee Meeting / Boston MA, USA
May 7-9 2014: PROHITECT 2nd International Conference on Protection of Historical Constructions / Antalya, Turkey
June 11-13 2014: SIF 8th International Conference on Structures in Fire / Shanghai, China
CONFIRE Project has several important contributions to the structural fire engineering research and to the general public. As target groups, the findings of CONFIRE project will contribute to students, researchers, fire testing laboratories, and structural fire consultants. 1) The fire test and the numerical model show that the composite floor survives the fire although the shear connections perform weakly. With strengthening the connections, it is possible to use no fire protection on the secondary beam in floors. This project has a major socio-economic impact since avoiding fire protection will create significant savings in construction and highly benefit the steel industry. 2) A specialized mechanical device for symmetric boundary conditions (see Figure 4): A quarter section of the composite floor with special boundary conditions is designed, which behaves like a full-size compartment. This type of mechanical device is used for the first time in the structural fire research field and it has major implications in fire testing of large compartments in furnaces. Using this device, compartments up to 10m in length could be tested in conventional furnaces all around the world. The patent application for the mechanical device is filed at the Technology Transfer Office at Bogazici University. 3) Advanced finite element techniques such as convergence and stabilization, coupling and contact interaction methodologies for three dimensional solid element models. 4) The results of CONFIRE Project facilitated the launch of a new project: Structural Fire Reliability Assessment of High-Rise Buildings. New proposals to ERC and TUBITAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) are currently prepared.
Midterm Report [Download]
Final Report [Download]
Selamet S, Bolukbas C (2015). Fire resilience of composite floors with shear connections. Fire Safety Journal, accepted.
Selamet S, Bolukbas C (2015). Fire performance of single plate shear connections in a composite floor. Journal of Structural Fire Engineering, accepted.
Selamet S, Ozdemir T, Bolukbas C (2014). Fire performance of steel shear connections in a composite floor. 8th International Conference on Structures in Fire (SIF), Shanghai, China.
Ozdemir T, Selamet S (2013). Yüksek katlı yapılarda yangının çökmeye etkisi. TUYAK Third Symposium and Exhibition on Fire and Security, Istanbul, Turkey.
Selamet S (2013). Fire performance of an unprotected composite beam with semi-rigid end restraints. ASFE Applications of Structural Fire Engineering, Prague Czech Republic.