Reinforced concrete walls during fire, Investigation of the out-of-plane flexural capacity

Abstract

Current building codes address the design of concrete walls for fire by specifying minimum thicknesses and concrete covers based on required fire ratings. As building codes move towards performance-based design for fire, it is important to provide engineers with tools to design concrete walls to resist fire. The out-of-plane flexural capacity of a wall is critical to resist loads associated with the hose stream during fire-fighting efforts, wind loads, and movements perpendicular to the wall longitudinal axis. In this paper, a parametric study is conducted to evaluate the effect of different parameters on the out-of-plane flexural capacity. A simplified sectional analysis method is utilized to sketch the moment-curvature diagrams of different walls. Results are examined to assess the effect of each of the considered parameters on the wall out-of-plane performance and capacity.