Behaviour of steel and composite joints in fire

Abstract

As structural fire engineering is increasingly based on understanding the behaviour of whole structures and their individual parts in fire, this is based on a combination of experimental and analytical research. In the case of joints the motivation for this approach is twofold; on the one hand designers wish to take advantage of the potential control of beam deflections which can be gained from real joints, and on the other it is necessary to ensure that joints are robust enough in fire to resist structural collapse. At the time of writing research into joint behaviour in fire is not sufficiently advanced for detailed design procedures to be developed. This paper gives a picture of the current situation in research and an indication of likely directions of this research in future. [excerpt from Introduction]