1
Ductile Fire-resistive Material for Enhanced Fire Safety Under Multi-hazards –
A Feasibility Study
Qian Zhang
1
, Victor C. Li
2
1
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan, 1328
G.G. Brown Building, 2350 Hayward St., Ann Arbor, MI, 48109; PH (734)763-1315;
email: maplezq@umich.edu
2
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan, 2326
G.G. Brown Building, 2350 Hayward St., Ann Arbor, MI, 48109; PH (734) 764-3688;
email: vcli@umich.edu
ABSTRACT
Multi-hazards, such as earthquake and/or impact followed by fire, represent a
major challenge on fire protection of steel structures. Spray-applied fire-resistive
material (SFRM) is one of the most widely used passive fire protection material in
North America. However, SFRM is inherently brittle and tends to dislodge or
delaminate under extreme loading conditions (earthquakes or impacts) and even
under normal service conditions such as wind induced building movement. Such loss
of fire protection material puts the steel structure in great danger under fire loading.
As an alternative to conventional brittle cementitious material, engineered
cementitious composites (ECC) is a family of high performance fiber reinforced
cementitious composites. ECC typically exhibits strain hardening behavior with very
high tensile ductility (3-5%) under static and high rate loading. In this paper, a new
type of fire-resistive material that combines the desirable thermal insulation property
of SFRM and the enhanced ductility of ECC is proposed as an alternative material to
current SFRM. Two preliminary mixture designs are presented. The thermal
conductivity of the new fire-resistive ECC are measured in accordance with ASTM
E2584 and are shown to be similar or lower than a conventional SFRM within the
same density range. The proposed material achieves tensile strength up to 3 MPa and
tensile strain capacity as high as 2.9%, significantly higher than those of conventional
SFRM. Fire-resistive ECC with enhanced mechanical performance is expected to
improve the overall fire safety of steel structure under multi-hazards.
INTRODUCTION
Behaviors and design of seismic resistance, impact resistance and fire
resistance of structures have received wide attentions. However, most structures are
not designed for more severe multi hazard scenarios, such as earthquakes or impacts
followed by fires. These scenarios are not rare in reality, and represent a major
challenge for civil engineers. One of the challenges is associated with the poor
performance of cementitious spray-applied fire-resistive materials (SFRM) for steel
structures under such conditions.
1148 Structures Congress 2014 © ASCE 2014
Structures Congress 2014
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