Fire Safety Engineering Second Edition

Abstract

Since the publication of the First Edition of this book, substantial progress has occurred in Structural Fire Safety Engineering which has necessitated the production of a Second Edition. However, the author must report the death of two personally influential figures noted in the acknowledgements to the first edition, namely Bill Malhotra and Tony Morris, and the retirement of the third, Bob Anchor. The intention behind this text remains provision to those involved in aspects of the design of structures to withstand the accidental effects due to fire occurring within part or the whole of the structure and of the tools required to enable such a design to be carried out. One of the major revisions is that the author has concentrated on the European Design Codes rather than British Standards which will in the course of the next five years become effectively obsolete. However, the designer should still be aware that any design code is subject to revision or amendment and that it is essential that the most recent edition be used, and that where this produces a discrepancy between this text and the Code, the Code must be taken as the final arbiter. The second major revision has been due to the impact of the largescale fire tests carried out at Cardington. This has meant there has had to be a re-assessment of the behaviour of composite steel–concrete frame structures, in that the whole structure performance markedly outweighs that of single elements. Equally, there are a number of guides produced by either the Institution of Structural Engineers or the Building Research Establishment promoting Structural Fire Safety Engineering. The best available texts were used for the EuroCode material as some of the EuroCodes had not at the time when this text was prepared been finally approved or released by CEN (Comité Européen de Normalisation) for publication by the appropriate National Standards Organization. It is thus possible that there might be discrepancies between this text and the final published EN versions of the EuroCodes. It is hoped such variations are slight and will mostly be concerned with interpretive matters or