Stainless steel in fire

A recently completed European project has enabled a better understanding of the heating up characteristics and degradation of resistance of stainless steel members in a fire, studied both through fire tests and numerical modelling.

A stainless steel column during a furnace test
Column fire test results.

The 4-year project was funded by the European Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS) and by stainless steel producers. The final report of the project has just been approved by the RFCS for publication. SCI co-ordinated this project and the partners were CTICM, Centro Sviluppo Materiale, Outokumpu Stainless, University of Hannover, VTT, Statens Byggeforskning Institut and ArcelorMittal Stainless.

Stainless steel in buildings is almost always exposed, so the project aimed to identify structural solutions that give a specified period of fire resistance without any fire protection applied to the surface of the steel. The topics studied included:

• load-bearing and separating elements with 30 and 60 minutes’ fire resistance;
• concrete filled hollow sections in fire;
• hybrid stainless-carbon steel composite floor beams in fire;
• slender hollow sections in fire;
• welded and bolted connections in fire.

For more information please contact Nancy Baddoo, Manager, Materials, SCI (01344 636547; E-mail nancy.baddoo@steel-sci.com).