The fundamental behavior and stability (failure resistance) of steel building structures and column subsystems subjected to realistic fire loading will be investigated. Prior research has not addressed this issue adequately. It has focused more on conducting standard ASTM E119 fire tests of individual members (columns) and floor sub-assemblies. As a result, the current fire resistant design provisions do not account for overall structural behavior and stability under realistic fire loading, and are mostly prescriptive Two of the major recommendations made by NIST investigators after studying the World Trade Center collapse are: (1) to develop test methods, analytical tools, and guidelines for evaluating the fire performance of building structures as complete system, and (2) to develop performance-based fire resistant design provisions for building structures. The research objective of this project are (1) To investigate experimentally the fundamental behavior and stability (up to failure) of steel column sub-systems under structural loads and realistic fire loading effects; (2) To develop and validate analytical (numerical) models that predict response of steel systems to realistic fire loading up to failure; (3) To develop analytical models and investigate the overall behavior and failure of 3D building structures subjected to service loads and realistic compartment fire loading, while accounting for the complex behavior and failure of the column sub-systems comprising the compartments.
