Two-dimensional Modelling of Thermal Responses of GFRP Profiles Exposed to ISO-834 Fire

Abstract

In the past three decades, one-dimensional (1-D) thermal model was usually used to estimate the thermal responses of glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) materials and structures. However, the temperature gradient and mechanical degradation of whole cross sections cannot be accurately evaluated. To address this issue, a two-dimensional (2-D) thermo-mechanical model was developed predict the thermal and mechanical responses of rectangular GFRP tubes subjected to one-side ISO-834 fire exposure in this paper. The 2-D governing heat transfer equations with thermal boundary conditions, discretized by alternating direction implicit (ADI) method, were solved by Gauss-Seidel iterative approach. Then the temperature-dependent mechanical responses were obtained by considering the elastic modulus degradation from glass transition and decomposition of resin. The temperatures of available experimental results can be reasonably predicted. This model can also be extended to simulate the thermo-mechanical responses of beams and columns subjected to multi-side fire loading, which may occur in real fire scenarios.