Resumen de FIRE RESPONSE ANALYSIS OF CIRCULAR CONCRETE FILLED TUBULAR COLUMNS AND THE EFFECTS OF AXIAL AND ROTATIONAL RESTRAINTS
The combination of different materials to form a single structural member to take profit of their individual good characteristics is a successfully established practice in building industry. In concrete filled tubular columns (CFT) the combined action of steel and concrete results in many positive attributes at ambient temperature: high load-bearing capacity with smaller cross-section size, aesthetics, high stiffness and ductility and reduced construction cost. In the last decades, the use of CFT columns in building industry, especially in high-rise buildings, has increased not only because of their positive characteristics at room temperature, but also for their inherent high fire resistance. Besides, CFT sections are greatly versatile given that they admit different types of concrete infill such as plain concrete, bar-reinforced concrete or fiber reinforced concrete; and also a wide variety of shapes. Although the more commonly used shapes are circular, and rectangular, new configurations and shapes are continuously appearing together with innovative materials. The ambient temperature behavior of CFT columns has been deeply studied and, in turn, the investigations dealing with their fire behavior have increased. For its structural analysis, the column can be considered as an isolated member or as a column integrated in a structure interacting with other structural members. The review of the state of the art in the area of CFT columns in fire carried out in the framework of this thesis has pointed out that most works cover the fire response of isolated members and that the existing studies on columns within frames differ in their proposals and conclusions. In this thesis, the fire response of CFT columns is analyzed by means of a fiber beam element model. First, a realistic cross-sectional thermal model is implemented to be integrated in the thermo-mechanical model developed whose accuracy is validated against experimental results after its calibration. Parametric studies are carried out with the aim of investigating the main factors affecting the problem and developing a simple calculation method based on Eurocode 4 and using the concept of equivalent concrete core cross-section. Finally, given the reduced computational cost of the fiber model, the effects of axial and rotational restraint in the fire response of CFT columns are investigated by integrating the heated CFT column within a frame. A parametric analysis is performed in order to draw conclusions about this interaction and contrast the current code provisions. The scope of this thesis is limited to circular CFT columns subjected to concentric axial loads.
