Structural Fire Safety Assessment of RC Parks for Cars and Motor Scooters Using the FSE Approach

During the last years, the use of performance-based approach according to the Fire Safety Engineering (FSE) is becoming ever more widespread. This approach is particularly used for the definition of the potential fires and of the structural fire behaviour of buildings with intended use of car parks. However, if the park is used for motor scooters, the international scientific framework offers very few information about its fire safety, both for fluid dynamic and thermomechanical aspects. In this work, several fire scenarios correlated to the two different park intended uses were investigated, starting from experimental Heat Release Rate curves. These curves were used for CFD analyses to define the time-temperature distributions during selected fire scenarios. Several thermomechanical analyses of a reinforced concrete structure were performed using both natural and nominal fire curves. A benchmark between the different cases were performed, underlining the importance of the FSE to reduce the structural fire demand.