Student: Mike Drury
Project: Resistance and Robustness of Composite Floor Systems to Fire
View: Research Poster (PDF) | Presentation (YouTube)
Department: Civil and Environmental Engineering
Advisor: Spencer Quiel
Abstract
Performance-based design methods are the future of how buildings will be designed to resist fires. Prior to the full implementation of this more robust procedure, the groundwork of experimental testing and model validation needs to be laid to provide the necessary background for practicing engineers to have confidence utilizing performance-based techniques over the traditional, prescriptive methods. One particular area of focus for tall buildings made of steel and concrete is the composite floor system (consisting of the secondary steel framing members and the shear connected concrete slabs). Though this system is not as critical to the overall structural support as the primary load resisting frames, it typically makes up a larger proportion of the fire protection cost and behavior in compartment fires. The work discussed here provides an experimental and computational investigation of multiple composite steel beam fire tests conducted in the structural furnace at Lehigh University’s ATLSS Laboratory as well as parametric analyses with various fire curves and levels of passive protection. The objective is to validate numerical models that conservatively capture both collapse time in the event of failure and residual capacity in the event of survival of composite floors subjected to fire. The resulting models strive for simplicity, to help further realize performance-based design and evaluation approaches for structural-fire resistance and robustness (resilience) of secondary floor framing in steel buildings.
About Mike Drury
Michael Drury is currently a PhD student in Structural Engineering at Lehigh University, studying specifically structural-fire engineering in buildings. He holds both a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering with a minor in Economics and an M.S. degree in Structural Engineering from Lehigh University. He is currently the Vice-President of Lehigh’s Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) chapter as well as the Fritz Engineering Research Society (FERS). As a graduate student, Michael was a part of the first-place team from Lehigh for the nationwide Precast Concrete Institute (PCI) Big Beam Competition in 2019. He has served as a teaching assistant for the multiple classes including Engineering Statics, Fundamentals of Structural Steel Design, and Senior Capstone Design. Michael has also interned for Simpson, Gumpertz, & Heger and Langan Engineering & Environmental Services. As an undergraduate student, he was the President of the Steel Bridge Club and was awarded the John B. Carson Prize.