WebWire | Designing for Fire
The World Trade Center disaster in September 2001 focused attention on the danger of fire in tall buildings. "Tall buildings are often explicitly designed to withstand high winds and earthquakes but fires have not been as well considered," says Martin Gillie of the School of Engineering and Electronics, University of Edinburgh.
When a fire breaks out, structural materials expand as they are heated. This leads to high forces that cause walls and floors to bow and warp. Most buildings are not designed to withstand these additional forces and may collapse. If a structure can remain upright, it buys valuable time for people to escape and also allows the fire service and other emergency workers to operate more safely. But the behaviour of structural materials, especially concrete, in a fire is an area of uncertainty. This latest experiment takes a step towards remedying that lack of knowledge.
