Full-scale fire testing to collapse of steel stiffened plate structures under lateral patch loading (part 1) – without passive fire protection

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present a fire test database on the collapse of a full-scale steel stiffened plate structure without passive fire protection under lateral patch loading. Steel plate panels of an as-built 1900 TEU containership in compliance with test facility in a maximum size and capacity were considered as a reference structure, with principal dimensions of 7 m long and 4.8 m wide fitted with two transverse frames and seven longitudinal stiffeners. Lateral patch loading was applied using two loading actuators at the centre of each transverse frame. A fire test was conducted in a furnace fuelled by liquefied petroleum gas, where the maximum gas cloud temperature inside the furnace was increased up to 800°C during testing. Time history of the lateral deformations of the test structure was measured with the focus on a critical period of time until the structure reached the ultimate limit state (or collapse) after the fires started. Details of the test database are documented, which will be useful for validating computational models for structural failure analysis in fires.