Fire Safety Journal 37 (2002) 217–227 Brazilian standards for steel structures fire design Valdir Pignatta e Silva a, *, Ricardo Hallal Fakury b a Escola Polit ! ecnica da Universidade de S * ao Paulo, Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil b Escola de Engenharia da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil Received 28 February 2001; received in revised form 5 July 2001; accepted 22 August 2001 Abstract The aim of this work is introduce to the international scientific community the recently released Brazilian Standards for the design of steel structures under fire situations. They are: ‘‘Steel Structures Fire Design’’ (NBR 14323/1999) and ‘‘Fire Resistance Requirements for Building Construction Elements’’ (NBR 14432/2000). The aim of structure fire design is to prevent the structure from collapsing, allowing enough time for safe evacuation of building occupants, safe fire fighting operations and reduction in damage to neighboring construction. NBR-14323 provides a simplified method for calculation of fire resistance design for steel structural elements. NBR-14432 presents prescriptive recommendations for minimum fire resistance time of construction elements. This Standard also waives fire resistance time requirements depending on building height and area, fire protection devices and occupancy. They also allow the use of alternative methods of fire safety engineering. r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Most of the deaths, in a building fire, occur by asphyxia in the early stages. European research [1] shows that the risk of this kind of death is 30 times smaller than that in transport systems. Life risk due to structural failure from fire is even smaller. Despite the low risk of death by fire, protection of human life must always be considered in building design. The inclusion of fire prevention and extinguishing measures and ways of allowing rapid evacuation from burning buildings must be consciously analyzed by both designer and owner, taking into account the specific *Corresponding author. Fax: +5511-3818-5181. E-mail address: valdir@uol.com.br (V.P. Silva). 0379-7112/02/$-see front matter r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII:S0379-7112(01)00044-3