Recent years have witnessed substantial research into the behaviour and design of stainless steel structures, enabling the development and expansion of, among others, the European structural stainless steel design standard EN 1993-1-4. However, despite considerable progress in the establishment of room temperature design guidance, design rules for elevated temperatures are far less developed. The fire design provisions set out in EN 1993-1-2 for stainless steel structural components are largely based on those originally developed for carbon steel, as well as the room temperature stainless steel design rules given in EN 1993-1-4; as a result, there is significant scope for improvement.
To this end, a comprehensive study has been carried out into the structural behaviour of stainless steel I-sections in fire. At the cross-section level, finite element models of stainless steel plates and I-sections, capable of mimicking their response in fire, were first created and validated against experimental results from the literature; the validated models were then employed to generate extensive structural performance data. A new cross-section classification approach and new effective width equations that are able to reflect the variation in strength and stiffness of stainless steel at different temperature levels were put forward. At the member level, eight column fire tests and six beam-column fire tests were conducted, the results of which were replicated numerically. Extensive parametric studies were then performed on stainless steel I-section columns and beam-columns at elevated temperatures. For the purpose of establishing an accurate and practical means of designing stainless steel columns and beam-columns in fire, new design rules were also proposed. The fire design provisions proposed in this research are due to be incorporated into the upcoming version of EN 1993-1-2.