Fire resistance of high strength concrete filled steel tubular columns under combined temperature and loading

In recent years, concrete-filled box or tubular columns have been commonly used in high-rise buildings. However, a number of fire test results show that there are significant differences between high strength concrete (HSC) and normal strength concrete (NSC) after being subjected to high temperatures. Therefore, this paper presents an investigation on the fire resistance of HSC filled steel tubular columns (CFTCs) under combined temperature and loading. Two groups of full-size specimens were fabricated to consider the effect of type of concrete infilling (plain and reinforced) and the load level on the fire resistance of CFTCs. Prior to fire test, a constant compressive load (i.e., load level for fire design) was applied to the column specimens. Thermal load was then applied on the column specimens in form of ISO 834 standard fire curve in a large-scale laboratory furnace until the set experiment termination condition was reached. The results demonstrate that the higher the axial load level, the worse the fire resistance. Moreover, in the bar-reinforced concrete-filled steel tubular columns, the presence of rebars not only decreased the spread of cracks and the sudden loss of strength, but also contributed to the load-carrying capacity of the concrete core.