Development of a Novel GUI-Based Computer Program for Predicting the Temperature Distribution in the Concrete Compartment and Member

Accidental fires have shown that fires can be of a spreading nature, burn for longer durations until the fuel has been exhausted, or be uncontrolled until fire fighter intervention. These observations limit the use of nominal fire curves for performance assessment of structural members during fire. In this article, a novel graphical user interface (GUI)-based computer program is developed to capture the spreading nature of fire. The temperature inside the compartment is evaluated by superposition of the temperature rise due to heat flux from flames and heat transfer from smoke. The temperature of the member is evaluated by solving the equation of heat conduction in space and time domain by the finite difference method. The smoke temperature, resultant temperature after collation, and temperature inside the concrete member are validated and a reasonable agreement is observed. A demonstration describing the application of the developed computer program has been discussed, which concluded that different locations inside a compartment are subjected to different temperature-time curves during the fire. This developed computer program can be applied to any occupancy in which fuel-controlled traveling fire can occur to predict the temperature distribution inside the concrete compartment as well as inside the concrete member during the fire duration. Additional features will be added in future to computer programs to perform structural analysis during fire.