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Buckling Analysis of Rack Uprights Exposed to Localised Fires

SHUBIN HE, CHONG REN, XIANZHONG ZHAO, CHUNXIANG LI

Abstract


This paper describes a numerical investigation into buckling behaviour of bare cold-formed steel uprights subjected to compression when exposed to a localised fire in a large open-plan compartment (i.e. storage warehouse). Two positions of fire sources, at the bottom and at the mid-span of uprights, are considered in the study. Heat transfer analysis for both fire sources are initially studied to consider the temperature gradients along the length of upright. According to EN 1991-1-2, a subroutine is compiled to simulate the non-uniform temperature distributions of member exposed to a localised fire and the subroutine is implanted into ABAQUS. Steel rack uprights with various boundary conditions are investigated to determine the critical buckling loads of uprights. The developed finite element model is carefully validated against experimental data. The results reveal that the variations of temperature along the length of member have some influences on the buckling performance. Moreover, the boundary restraint appears to be a significant influence on the buckling performance when the members experience different fire sources.

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