A STATIC SOLVER FOR HYBRID FIRE SIMULATION BASED ON MODEL REDUCTION AND DYNAMIC RELAXATION

Large-scale tests of an entire structure are generally prohibitively expensive, both in terms of finances and time, because of the need for expensive specialized facilities. As a result, most of the research regarding the behavior of structures subjected to fire has been carried out on partial subassemblies or single components subjected to standard heating curves. Standard fire tests use simplified mechanical boundary conditions for the tested structural element. However, for some elements, these conditions can lead to results that are overly conservative. Hybrid fire simulation emerged as a viable solution for performing component level experiments that account for the interaction between the tested specimen and a realistic yet virtual subassembly instantiated in a finite-element software. On these premises, this work presents a virtual hybrid fire simulation campaign conceived for a steel braced frame. Numerical experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of a newly conceived hybrid fire simulation algorithm. Finite-element simulations performed with the software SAFIR are used as a reference for verification.