Rotational capacity of pre-damaged I-section steel beams at elevated temperatures

Structures submitted to Fire-After-Earthquake loading situations, are first experiencing inelastic deformations due to the seismic action and are then submitted to the thermal loading. This means that in the case of steel framed structures, at the starting point of the fire, plastic hinges have already been formed at the ends of the beams. The basic objective of this paper is the evaluation of the rotational capacity of steel I-section beams damaged due to prior earthquake loading, at increased temperatures. The study is conducted numerically and three-dimensional models are used in order to capture accurately the nonlinear behaviour of the steel beams. Different levels of earthquake-induced damage are examined in order to study the effect of the initial state of damage to the temperature-evolution of the rotational capacity. The study starts with the reference case where the beam is undamaged and in the sequel cyclic loading patterns are taken into account, which represent earthquakes loads of increasing magnitude. Additionally, the study extends to the evaluation of the ultimate plastic rotation of the steel beams which corresponds to the point where the rotational capacity of the beam is exhausted. The aforementioned value of rotation can be used as a criterion for the determination of the fire-resistance time of the structure in case of Fire-After-Earthquake situations.