Experimental Validation of Heat Propagation: Results of the Numerical Modelling for Real Scale Steel Structural Elements and Different Assigned Models, Subjected to Simulated Fire

Abstract

Currently the fire protection problems for structural elements, is usually solved by means of the prototype-model correlations, established by means of dimensional methods. The authors, based on a reliable state-of-art analysis, established the advantages and limits of the presently-used dimensional methods. Finally, they state that these methods have several serious shortcomings, which entirely disappear by applying the “Modern Dimensional Analysis (MDA)”, conceived by Szirtes [65] [66]. The authors have used MDA since 2000, in solving several engineering problems; for instance, heat transfer modelling along steel structural elements, unprotected-, as well as protected, against the fire. They briefly describe both the obtained Model Laws and their experimental validation, based on an original electric-heated test bench. In this paper, we offer the numerical simulation (with Finite Elements Method, FEM) of the experimental-obtained thermal fields for a real structural element, as well as for its reduced scale models. The obtained simulation results are in good agreement with the experimental data and consequently, the proposed numerical model is valid.