A New Fire Safe Design Solution for Reinforced Concrete Beams at Catastrophic Fire Conditions

An accidental fire in buildings is common, which results in an enormous economic loss and face human casualties. For hence, fire prevention and vital installation measures for life safety and evacuation system have been acknowledged in the National Building Code (NBC). However, in the catastrophic fire scenarios, structural stability and integrity is the last option when all safety measure fails and as seen in the NBC, it does not deal with any design safe solution nor IS 456 codes for plain and reinforced concrete (RC) members. Therefore, in this research paper, a performance-based fire safe design solution for RC beams has been proposed for evaluating the ultimate moment carrying capacity at any fire load. The fire safe design solution is considering unsteady-state heat transfer field within RC beam by acknowledging fire exposure condition, and thermal-induced materials and mechanical properties at elevated temperature. The proposed fire safe design solution for RC beams is an essential technique to reduce risks of structural failure and gives pre-information at catastrophic fire scenarios that help planning and design for safe evacuation systems and improve structural fire resistance by the choice of materials and design.