Assessment of Thermal Insulation Applied to Structural Steel

In the present work, thermal blanket has been adopted as a thermal insulating material that is applied on the structural steel members as a thermal insulation measure, when the structural steel members are exposed to high temperature. In this work, a structural steel beam having an I section (ISMB450) having a span of 5 m is adopted with fixed end conditions exposed to a range of high temperatures (500ºC and 725ºC) separately. A heat transfer analysis in Abaqus is carried out to study the temperature distribution in the steel beam for different temperature exposures. The thermal blanket having different thicknesses is applied on to the surface of the steel beam along its entire span as thermal insulation. An optimum thickness of the thermal blanket is identified from this study that would insulate the steel beam from the temperature rise to take place on its surface, when exposed to high temperature based on the heat transfer analysis carried out such that, the thermally insulated steel beam is in stable condition when exposed to high temperature.