Fire Protection and Sustainability of Structural Steel Buildings with Double-Shell Brickwork Cladding

The proposed paper focuses on the research of sustainability of steel buildings in the case of a double-shell brickwork cladding, assessed under fire protection criteria and fire performance aspects. More specifically, it concerns an approach in designing and evaluating the structural components of energy-efficient steel buildings with regards to their fire performance. It is important to understand what the performance criteria are intended to be applied when selecting a particular material or method, including exposure to fire, duration, aesthetics, cost and maintenance. Application of insulating materials is one of the most common means of protecting structural steel members from fire. The knowledge and the practical outcomes about the fire resistance of the steel buildings with double-brickwork cladding have been derived on the basis of an estimation and evaluation of fire resistance of several construction details of the building's envelope. The study focuses on the thermal analysis of structural steel members, whose cross-section consists of the steel member core, the thermal and fire insulation and other layers. Because of the complexity that governs the equations describing the thermal phenomena, the structural detail models have been studied using finite element analysis. This is a thermal analysis that permits to quantify the response of the respective structural elements in terms of temperature with reference to time. The aim of the expected data is to evaluate the position of a steel member in connection with the double-shell brickwork cladding and promote those construction materials that are efficient under fire taking into account simultaneously their thermophysical, hydrothermal and environmental properties.