Modular buildings under fire
With the speed and cost benefits, modular construction is considered a game-changing solution in response to pandemics and natural disasters, and tackling the affordable housing crisis on a large scale. However, its uptake has been hindered due to recent fire incidents of modular buildings. This project aims to develop novel fire experiments and advanced modelling techniques to evaluate the fire performance of modular buildings. Computational tools and fire safety design guidelines will also be developed to enable modular buildings to be built safer and more economically. This recently funded ARC Discovery Project (DP230100018) will be conducted in collaboration with the University of New South Wales (UNSW).
This project explores the fire performance of modular buildings made from composite shear walls and concrete filled steel tubular (CFST) columns. The project is composed of three different packages to look at three different structural systems used in modular buildings: (1) composite shear walls, (2) composite modular units with CFST columns, and (3) inter-module connections. Both experimental and modelling approaches are employed in this project. Design recommendations are also developed to provide structural fire engineers guidance for the safety design of modular buildings under fire.
1. Composite shear walls: We will look at both normal and high strength composite shear walls under fire. Preliminary results of the modelling task can be found in Ref. [1]. On-going work based on the verified numerical models is carried out to develop the tabulated data guidelines for fire design of composite shear walls in AS/NZS2327.
2. Composite modular units: The fire performance of the whole composite modular unit and the CFST columns used in modular units was examined in Refs. [2,3]. Different fire scenarios (uniform and non-uniform fire) were considered to realistically represent what happens when the modular building is exposed to fire. Then the fire behaviour of the whole composite modular building is simulated for a 10 storey prototype modular building. The results of this simulation will provide insights into the fire performance of modular buildings.
3. Inter-module connections: The fire behaviour of inter-module connections in modular buildings will be examined. We will look at the behaviour of both connectors (i.e., connecting beams and columns within a modular unit) and connections (i.e., connecting between modules).
References
[1] Wang Y, Khan M, Uy B, Lim L, Thai HT, Ngo T. Behaviour, design and performance of steel-concrete composite walls in fire. Journal of Constructional Steel Research 2024; Submitted.
[2] Lama L, Gernay T, Thai HT, Ngo T, Uy B. Behaviour of modular building incorporating CFST columns subjected to compartment fire. Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Structures in Fire (SiF 2024), University of Coimbra, Portugal, June 2024.
[3] Lama L, Gernay T, Thai HT, Ngo T, Uy B. Nonlinear analysis and design of high-strength concrete filled steel tubular columns under nonuniform fires. Journal of Constructional Steel Research 2024;217:108633.