AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF

Pour les panneaux de grande hauteur soumis à un fort gradient thermique associé à l’incendie, ils subissent des déplacements hors plan importants qui, du fait de l’excentrement du poids propre qui en résulte, vont engendrer des efforts de flexion venant s’ajouter aux efforts de compression déjà existants. Un tel changement de géométrie, d’autant plus prononcé que le panneau est de grande hauteur, combiné à une dégradation simultanée des propriétés de résistance des matériaux sous l’effet de l’élévation de température, peut conduire à un effondrement de la structure sous poids propre. L’évaluation de la résistance au feu d’éléments de structures de grandes dimensions, repose sur la théorie du calcul à la rupture, appliquée d’une part à la détermination d’un diagramme d’interaction au feu caractérisant la résistance du panneau en chacune de ses sections, d’autre part à l’analyse de la ruine globale du panneau dans sa configuration déformée. Le programme comporte deux volets complémentaires. Le premier volet concerne l’approche expérimentale. Un mur de 9 mètre a été testé sur le grand équipement Vulcain afin de valider le modèle de calcul d’une part, qui est en cours du développement, et à identifier des phénomènes locaux éventuels non accessibles par la modélisation d’autre part. Le deuxième volet concerne le développement d’outils de modélisation et de calcul performants. Basées sur une approche cinématique, des procédures itératives qui se reposent sur la méthode de perturbation ont été construit pour chercher une solution analytique pour prédire la configuration déformée d’une plaque soumis à un fort gradient thermique. Ensuite, des méthodes numériques fondées sur la discrétisation en éléments finis du panneau déformé, traité comme une coque à faible courbure, et l’utilisation de techniques d’optimisation non-linéaires, qui ont connu récemment des progrès importants, devront pouvoir être développées et appliquées à ce problème / High rise reinforced concrete walls under fire exhibit important out-of-plane displacements, which in turn lead to an eccentricity of the self-weight with respect to the initial undeformed configuration, resulting in supplementary bending moments. This geometrical change, combined with the degradation of the stiffness and strength properties of reinforced concrete due to severe temperature increase, may lead to the failure of walls under fire.Investigation on fire resistance of reinforced concrete walls will be based on the yield design approach in order to analyze the global stability of high rise walls, taking into account the geometry changes induced by the thermal loading.The program consists of two parts.Firstly, a 9-meter high reinforced concrete wall has already been tested under fire with the equipment Vulcan. This full size experiment aims at validating the modeling of plates under large out-of-plan displacement and identifying potential local phenomenon which has not been considered in the model.Secondly, a yield design approach will carried out to analyze the stability of reinforced concrete walls. By using the perturbation method, a recursive analytical procedure based on a kinematic approach is proposed to find the deformed configuration of reinforced concrete walls under fire. The deformed configuration will be later modeled as a shallow shell, on which a yield design procedure will be performed by a non-linear optimization

<p>External stores mounted on aircraft generate loads which need to be estimated before first takeoff. These loads can be measured in a wind tunnel but since the possible store configurations are basically endless, testing them all is neither economically feasible nor time efficient. Thus, scaling based on geometrical similarity is used. This can, however, be a crude method. Stores with similar geometrical properties can still behave in different ways due to aerodynamic interference caused by adjacent surfaces.</p><p>To improve the scaling performance, this work focuses on investigating two CFD codes, ADAPDT and Edge. The CFD simulations are used to derive the difference in aerodynamic coefficients, or the Δ-effect, between a reference store and the new untested store. The Δ-effect is then applied to an existing wind tunnel measurement of the reference store, yielding an estimation of the aerodynamic properties for the new store.</p><p>The results show that ADAPDT, using a coarse geometry representation, has large difficulties predicting the new store properties, even for a very simple store configuration on the aircraft. Therefore it is not suited to use as a scaling tool in its present condition. Edge on the other hand uses a more precise geometry representation and proves to deliver good estimations of the new store load behavior. Results are well balanced and mainly conservative. Some further work is needed to verify the performance but Edge is the recommended tool for scaling.</p><p> </p>

External stores mounted on aircraft generate loads which need to be estimated before first takeoff. These loads can be measured in a wind tunnel but since the possible store configurations are basically endless, testing them all is neither economically feasible nor time efficient. Thus, scaling based on geometrical similarity is used. This can, however, be a crude method. Stores with similar geometrical properties can still behave in different ways due to aerodynamic interference caused by adjacent surfaces. To improve the scaling performance, this work focuses on investigating two CFD codes, ADAPDT and Edge. The CFD simulations are used to derive the difference in aerodynamic coefficients, or the Δ-effect, between a reference store and the new untested store. The Δ-effect is then applied to an existing wind tunnel measurement of the reference store, yielding an estimation of the aerodynamic properties for the new store. The results show that ADAPDT, using a coarse geometry representation, has large difficulties predicting the new store properties, even for a very simple store configuration on the aircraft. Therefore it is not suited to use as a scaling tool in its present condition. Edge on the other hand uses a more precise geometry representation and proves to deliver good estimations of the new store load behavior. Results are well balanced and mainly conservative. Some further work is needed to verify the performance but Edge is the recommended tool for scaling.