Performance-based design for structures in fire: Advances, challenges, and perspectives

The Performance-Based Design approach provides a goal-oriented process to support safe, innovative, and resilient structural fire designs. However, adoption of this approach requires both a rigorous framework and appropriate analysis tools to assess the expected performance of structures in fire. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the Performance-Based Design approach, including the process and its specific elements, applied to structures in fire. First, the value of the approach is illustrated through a review of case studies. Then, the process is described with identification of the role of the structural fire engineer. Recent research in methods to enable the evaluation of the structural fire performance, conducted within the author's group at Johns Hopkins University, is discussed. Issues addressed include the coupling between the fire and thermal-structural models, the characterization of the material behavior at elevated temperature, numerical modeling of structures subjected to fire, probabilistic risk assessment, and cost-benefit analyses. The paper concludes with a discussion of some challenges and perspectives for the future of performance-based structural fire design.