Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

Experimental heat transfer and temperature correlations are presented for a steel beam installed beneath a ceiling when exposed to a localized fire source. The heat flux distribution on every part of the beam is formulated as a function of flame length and the distance from the fire source. A specially written finite volume code CV-FEM, as well as the general-purpose finite element code ANSYS were used for the numerical simulation. Experimental values of heat fluxes were applied as boundary conditions for the surfaces exposed to fire. The results of the three-dimensional transient thermal analysis obtained are compared with the experimental data. The program CV-FEM was found to be very effective for this type of problem. The experimental correlations obtained and numerical procedure developed can be used to predict the heating mechanism and thermal response of practical building members exposed to a localized fire.