Analysis of existing specialized software suitable for calculations and solving interdisciplinary tasks in modelling fire effects on building structures

Introduction. During the engineering design, the required fire resistance limits are assigned to structural elements in accordance with current regulatory documents. However, carrying out full-scale fire tests to confirm the required fire resistance limit for each version of the designed structure is economically inexpedient, as fire tests are a labour-intensive and expensive process. Software modelling of fire effects on structures is a complex and time-consuming task, based on fundamental physical laws of heat engineering and solid mechanics.

Goals. Analysis of software complexes and determination of their functional capabilities for modelling and performing interdisciplinary analysis in order to choose the most suitable one for calculations of structures and their assemblies under fire conditions.

Tasks. Analysis of the basic principles of fundamental physical laws and their representation in the finite element method, analysis of the reliability of the calculation results of each of their calculation complexes, recommendations on the choice of a software complex used in the calculation of structures during a fire.

Analytical part. During software packages analysis, the following issues were considered: the physical laws embedded in the calculation model of the structure operation during and after fire exposure, their interpretation in the finite element method, analysis of the most common software available on the market and designed to solve problems related to solid mechanics and heat engineering. Evaluation criteria for software packages were formulated and the results were summarized in a comparative table. The choice of the most suitable software is made on the results of the comparative table. The functional capabilities of the software systems were analyzed and a typical static problem for calculation in each of the PCs was formulated.

Conclusions. The comparative analysis of software complexes showed that for solving problems related to the impact on building structures of high temperatures during a fire, the most suitable software complex is ANSYS. It allows modelling and combining both static and thermal effects.

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