Fire safety analysis

This module requires the license “Fire safety analysis“.

A fire load will result in an increase the temperature of the cross section. A thermal response calculation will computer this increase. Click on the button to open the thermal response window:

• At the top, there are two tab pages: ‘FEM solver’ and ‘Analytical solver’.
  • FEM solver
    • will be solved with FEM (Finite Element Method)
    • is adequate for massive cross-section (usually in concrete)
  • Analytical solver
    • will be solved with the formulas of EN 1993-1-2
    • is adequate for slender sections (always in steel)

  Diamonds will determine automatically whether a section should be calculated using the analytical solver or FEM solver with following scheme:
  
  You can, if you wish to, convert a analytical case to an FEM case and reverse. This can be done by dragging the profile by its name to the desired solver.
  
  If the project has multiple bars having a fire load, all fire cases will be grouped per section with underneath the different boundary conditions.
  The section borders marked in yellow are subjected to fire load.
  Notes:

  • The analytical solver is not adequate to calculate massive sections!
  • Not all FEM cases can be converted to an analytical case and the other way around. If it is not possible to convert, Diamonds will display a message.
• An internal algorithm will calculate an appropriate mesh. The proposed values are in most of the cases just fine, so do not need to alter it. Only for cross section with a lot of difference between the width of the parts, you could decide to adjust the mesh in order to obtain a proper distributed net.
• Click to stop the calculations.

Read in this article how to do a fire design.