EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH ON THE DETERMINATION OF THE MAIN PARAMETERS AFFECTING THE BEHAVIOR OF REINFORCED-CONCRETE COLUMNS UNDER FIRE CONDITIONS

The design of reinforced concrete columns tinder fire conditions is ge nerally made on the basis of national and international recommendation s. The CEB/FIP recommendations have been used for many years. Recently , in the framework of the Eurocodes, the document ENV 1992-1-2 (Euroco de;1-1-2), Structural fire design, has been approved by Commission CEN /TC250/SC2 of the European Committee for Standardization. In the CEB/F IP documents and in Eurocode 2-1-2 the main part is devoted to design from tabulated data containing the dimensions of the cross-sections an d values for the concrete cover. The use of simplified calculation met hods is not current practice for concrete elements, while they are wid ely used in the case of steel. The determination of the temperature di stribution in the cross-section does not facilitate the development of a simplified method. Furthermore, in columns there is a wide scatter of experimental results. In order to gain additional information, an e xtensive experimental research programme on the behaviour of reinforce d concrete columns under Jive conditions, financially supported by the Belgian Funds for Fundamental Collective Research (FRFC-FKFO), has be en performed at the Universities of Liege and Ghent. Ic this article t he results of this research are presented and the influence of the mai n parameters is analysed.