The existing local fire code ¡§Standard for Installation of Fire Protection Facilities in Classified Areas¡¨ is prescriptive in nature and suitable for buildings, which can be well compartmented. It also described the minimum requirement for specific system designs such as fire and smoke compartmentation, mechanical smoke extraction rate, etc. on item 188. In this reserch, the concourse level encountered large spaces and is the vital part for passengers¡¦ movement, either under normal condition or in emergency cases. Therefore, a performance-based fire engineering design has been exercised which is also allowed in local fire code subject to approval from the authorities having jurisdiction. First, a comparative study of the code compliances should be addressed, with the alternative design options supported by 3D CFD simulation. The FDS (Fire Dynamic Simulation) program was utilized for this reserch for 3D CFD simulation. It is developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) of U.S.. FDS is a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of fire-driven fluid flow. The software solves numerically a form of the Navier-Stokes equations appropriate for thermally-driven flow with an emphasis on smoke and heat transport from fires. Secondly, it is decided that a full-scale hot smoke test should be conducted to validate the smoke management system performances under the as-built conditions. It can be summarized that, following the NFPA 92B N-percentage Criteria, both test 1 and test 2 results indicated that the hot smoke tests are successful, in validating that a sufficient smoke clear height can be maintained for safe evacuation should a 5 MW t-squared fast fire occurred at the concourse level. Finally, following the NFPA 130 and NFPA 92B as the design guides, the performance-based fire safety engineering design conducted in concourse level, is successful through 3D CFD simulations and full-scale hot smoke test. A smoke¡Vfree escape route can be maintained for a period of time much longer than needed for the worst case fire scenario which warrants a safe evacuation in case of a 5 MW fire occurred on concourse level.

I alla byggprojekt som behandlas är arkitekter och brandkonsulter två viktiga aktörer. Arkitekternas huvudsyfte är att ge människor ett gestaltningsmässigt intryck av en byggnad, men även att ge den ett praktiskt och tryggt användande. Brand-konsulternas roll är bland annat att hjälpa arkitekterna med den del som innefattar brandsäkerhet. Idag är samarbetet mellan arkitekter och brandkonsulter inte optimalt men det finns enkla förändringar som skulle effektivisera arbetsmetodiken. Detta examensarbete har resulterat i en lathund gällande brandprojektering som riktar sig till arkitekter. Lathunden baseras på kapitlet om brandskydd i Boverkets Byggregler (BBR), de omfattande handböckerna som används vid projektering samt statistik gällande de vanligaste problemen mellan aktörerna idag. Underlaget baserar vi på enkätundersökningar, intervjuer samt litteraturstudier. Lathunden syftar till att bli ett tydligare verktyg för arkitekterna, till skillnad mot de handböcker som används idag. Vi tar även fram alternativ och förslag för möjliga förbättringar gällande brandprojektering. Detta resulterar i en ekonomisk och tidsmässig vinst för inblandade parter. / Two important roles in all construction projects active today are the architects and the fire consultants. The architect´s main purpose is to give people a strong esthetic impression of the building but at the same time make it practical and safe for people to use. The fire consultant’s role is to help and support the architects to make the building safe to use, considering fire safety. This collaboration is not as effective as it could be in the current situation, and a few easy changes can be made to improve this working methodology. This bachelor thesis results in a lighter manual regarding fire planning, addressed to architects. The manual is based on the chapter in Boverkets Byggregler (BBR), which regulates the fire planning, the heavier handbooks that are being used today and also statistics regarding the most common difficulties between the two roles. The statistics are based on basic questionnaire surveys, interviews and literature studies. The manual will be a clearer tool for the architects, compared to the handbooks that are being used today. We are also going to introduce some alternatives and suggestions for possible improvements to the fire planning. This will result in a financial and temporal win for all parties involved.

In recent times, light gauge cold-formed steel sections have been used extensively in residential, industrial and commercial buildings as primary load bearing structural components. This is because cold-formed steel sections have a very high strength to weight ratio compared with thicker hot-rolled steel sections, and their manufacturing process is simple and cost-effective. However, these members are susceptible to various buckling modes including local and distortional buckling and their ultimate strength behaviour is governed by these buckling modes. Fire safety design of building structures has received greater attention in recent times due to continuing loss of properties and lives during fires. Hence, there is a need to fully evaluate the performance of light gauge cold-formed steel structures under fire conditions. Past fire research has focused heavily on heavier, hot-rolled steel members. The buckling behaviour of light gauge cold-formed steel members under fire conditions is not well understood. The buckling effects associated with thin steels are significant and have to be taken into account in fire safety design. Therefore, a research project based on extensive experimental and numerical studies was undertaken at the Queensland University of Technology to investigate the distortional buckling behaviour of light gauge cold-formed steel compression members under simulated fire conditions. As the first phase of this research program more than 115 tensile coupon tests of light gauge cold-formed steels including two steel grades and five thicknesses were conducted at elevated temperatures. Accurate mechanical properties including the yield strength, elasticity modulus and stress-strain curves were all determined at elevated temperatures since the deterioration of the mechanical properties is one of the major parameters in the structural design under fire conditions. An appropriate stress-strain model was also developed by considering the inelastic characteristics. The results obtained from the tensile coupon tests were then used to predict the ultimate strength of cold-formed steel compression members. In the second phase of this research more than 170 laboratory experiments were undertaken to investigate the distortional buckling behaviour of light gauge coldformed steel compression members at ambient and elevated temperatures. Two types of cross sections were selected with various thicknesses (nominal thicknesses are 0.6, 0.8, and 0.95 mm) and both low and high strength steels (G250 and G550 steels with minimum yield strengths of 250 and 550 MPa). The experiments were conducted at six different temperatures in the range of 20 to 800°C. A finite element model of the tested compression members was then developed and validated with the help of experimental results. The degradation of mechanical properties with increasing temperatures was included in finite element analyses. An extensive series of parametric analyses was undertaken using the validated finite element model to investigate the effect of all the influential parameters such as section geometry, steel thickness and grade, mechanical properties and temperature. The resulting large data base of ultimate loads of compression members subject to distortional buckling was then used to review the adequacy of the current design rules at ambient temperature. The current design rules were reasonably accurate in general, but in order to improve the accuracy further, this research has developed new design equations to determine the ultimate loads of compression members at ambient temperature. The developed equation was then simply modified by including the relevant mechanical properties at elevated temperatures. It was found that this simple modification based on reduced mechanical properties gave reasonable results, but not at higher temperatures. Therefore, they were further modified to obtain a more accurate design equation at elevated temperatures. The accuracy of new design rules was then verified by comparing their predictions with the results obtained from the parametric study. This thesis presents a description of the experimental and numerical studies undertaken in this research and the results including comparison with simply modified current design rules. It describes the laboratory experiments at ambient and elevated temperatures. It also describes the finite element models of cold-formed steel compression members developed in this research that included the appropriate mechanical properties, initial geometric imperfections and residual stresses. Finally, it presents the details of the new design equations proposed for the light gauge coldformed steel compression members subjected to distortional buckling effects at elevated temperatures.

Cold-formed steel members have been widely used in residential, industrial and commercial buildings as primary load bearing structural elements and non-load bearing structural elements (partitions) due to their advantages such as higher strength to weight ratio over the other structural materials such as hot-rolled steel, timber and concrete. Cold-formed steel members are often made from thin steel sheets and hence they are more susceptible to various buckling modes. Generally short columns are susceptible to local or distortional buckling while long columns to flexural or flexural-torsional buckling. Fire safety design of building structures is an essential requirement as fire events can cause loss of property and lives. Therefore it is essential to understand the fire performance of light gauge cold-formed steel structures under fire conditions. The buckling behaviour of cold-formed steel compression members under fire conditions is not well investigated yet and hence there is a lack of knowledge on the fire performance of cold-formed steel compression members. Current cold-formed steel design standards do not provide adequate design guidelines for the fire design of cold-formed steel compression members. Therefore a research project based on extensive experimental and numerical studies was undertaken at the Queensland University of Technology to investigate the buckling behaviour of light gauge cold-formed steel compression members under simulated fire conditions. As the first phase of this research, a detailed review was undertaken on the mechanical properties of light gauge cold-formed steels at elevated temperatures and the most reliable predictive models for mechanical properties and stress-strain models based on detailed experimental investigations were identified. Their accuracy was verified experimentally by carrying out a series of tensile coupon tests at ambient and elevated temperatures. As the second phase of this research, local buckling behaviour was investigated based on the experimental and numerical investigations at ambient and elevated temperatures. First a series of 91 local buckling tests was carried out at ambient and elevated temperatures on lipped and unlipped channels made of G250-0.95, G550-0.95, G250-1.95 and G450-1.90 cold-formed steels. Suitable finite element models were then developed to simulate the experimental conditions. These models were converted to ideal finite element models to undertake detailed parametric study. Finally all the ultimate load capacity results for local buckling were compared with the available design methods based on AS/NZS 4600, BS 5950 Part 5, Eurocode 3 Part 1.2 and the direct strength method (DSM), and suitable recommendations were made for the fire design of cold-formed steel compression members subject to local buckling. As the third phase of this research, flexural-torsional buckling behaviour was investigated experimentally and numerically. Two series of 39 flexural-torsional buckling tests were undertaken at ambient and elevated temperatures. The first series consisted 2800 mm long columns of G550-0.95, G250-1.95 and G450-1.90 cold-formed steel lipped channel columns while the second series contained 1800 mm long lipped channel columns of the same steel thickness and strength grades. All the experimental tests were simulated using a suitable finite element model, and the same model was used in a detailed parametric study following validation. Based on the comparison of results from the experimental and parametric studies with the available design methods, suitable design recommendations were made. This thesis presents a detailed description of the experimental and numerical studies undertaken on the mechanical properties and the local and flexural-torsional bucking behaviour of cold-formed steel compression member at ambient and elevated temperatures. It also describes the currently available ambient temperature design methods and their accuracy when used for fire design with appropriately reduced mechanical properties at elevated temperatures. Available fire design methods are also included and their accuracy in predicting the ultimate load capacity at elevated temperatures was investigated. This research has shown that the current ambient temperature design methods are capable of predicting the local and flexural-torsional buckling capacities of cold-formed steel compression members at elevated temperatures with the use of reduced mechanical properties. However, the elevated temperature design method in Eurocode 3 Part 1.2 is overly conservative and hence unsuitable, particularly in the case of flexural-torsional buckling at elevated temperatures.

This master’s thesis deals with matters of interior acoustics. Within the scope of the thesis, a design alteration proposal in terms of enhancing sound quality and reverberation time of an existing multi-purpose cultural hall situated in town of Karvina was carried out. First design draft was made using manual calculation process and processed afterwards using specialized software (Odeon Room Acoustics Program). Within the thesis’s specialization study, a design of forced ventilation combined with heat recovery and new roof support structure using wooden truss girders was made. A design proposal dealing with building structure alterations and minor changes in operational facility layout was also made. New flat roofs layer assembly and exterior walls insulation was designed. Taking all proposed changes into consideration, new fire safety design documentation was made. Final outcome is therefore overall reconstruction of the given building object in pursuit of enhancing operational facility layout, overall interior and exterior esthetics and building physics parameters of the object.

The importance of fire safety design has been realised due to the ever increasing loss of properties and lives caused by structural failures during fires. In recognition of the importance of fire safety design, extensive research has been undertaken in the field of fire safety of buildings and structures especially over the last couple of decades. In the same period, the development of fire safety engineering principles has brought significant reduction to the cost of fire protection. However the past fire research on steel structures has been limited to heavier, hot-rolled structural steel members and thus the structural behaviour of light gauge cold-formed steel members under fire conditions is not well understood. Since cold-formed steel structures have been commonly used for numerous applications and their use has increased rapidly in the last decade, the fire safety of cold-formed steel structural members has become an important issue. The current design standards for steel structures have simply included a list of reduction factors for the yield strength and elasticity modulus of hot-rolled steels without any detailed design procedures. It is not known whether these reduction factors are applicable to the commonly used thin, high strength steels in Australia. Further, the local buckling effects dominate the structural behaviour of light gauge cold-formed steel members. Therefore an extensive research program was undertaken at the Queensland University of Technology to investigate the local buckling behaviour of light gauge cold-formed steel compression members under simulated fire conditions. The first phase of this research program included 189 tensile coupon tests including three steel grades and six thicknesses to obtain the accurate yield strength and elasticity modulus values at elevated temperatures because the deterioration of the mechanical properties is the major parameter in the structural design under fire conditions. The results obtained from the tensile tests were used to predict the ultimate strength of cold-formed steel members. An appropriate stress-strain model was also developed by considering the inelastic mechanical characteristics. The second phase of this research was based on a series of more than 120 laboratory experiments and corresponding numerical analyses on cold-formed steel compression members to investigate the local bucking behaviour of the unstiffened flange elements, stiffened web elements and stiffened web and flange elements at elevated temperatures up to 800°C. The conventional effective design rules were first simply modified considering the reduced mechanical properties obtained from the tensile coupon tests and their adequacy was studied using the experimental and numerical results. It was found that the simply modified effective width design rules were adequate for low strength steel members and yet was not adequate for high strength cold-formed steel members due to the severe reduction of the ultimate strength in the post buckling strength range and the severe reduction ratio of the elasticity modulus to the yield strength at elevated temperatures. Due to the inadequacy of the current design rules, the theoretical, semi-empirical and empirical effective width design rules were developed to accurately predict the ultimate strength of cold-formed steel compression members subject to local buckling effects at elevated temperatures. The accuracy of these new design methods was verified by comparing their predictions with a variety of experimental and numerical results. This thesis presents the details of extensive experimental and numerical studies undertaken in this research program and the results including comparison with simply modified effective width design rules. It also describes the advanced finite element models of cold-formed steel compression members developed in this research including the appropriate mechanical properties, initial imperfections, residual stresses and other significant factors. Finally, it presents the details of the new design methods proposed for the cold-formed steel compression members subject to local buckling effects at elevated temperatures.

Master´s thesis “Multifunctional building in Brno Medlánky“ is processed in the form of project documentation. Multifunctional building is designed as a detached house with a flat roof. The object has four above-ground floors with no basement. In the object there are twelve flats and three shops altogether. The object is made of building system Porotherm.

The subject of the diploma thesis is to elaborate the design documentation of an apartment house with restaurant. The building is designed in the village of Lipůvka, South-Moravian region, on plot No.: 544/1 and 545/1 – cadastral region Lipůvka. The bulit-up area is 443,3 m2. There are four floors. There is restaurant, one housing unit (for persons with reduced mobility) and utility room in first above-ground floor. Second, third and fourth above-ground floor is for housing. Each of these three floors has three apartments – two apartments 3+k, one apartment 3+1. Entrance to every apartment is from main staircase. The building is based on the foundation walls of concrete C20/25, all vertical walls are from Porotherm System. Celings are composed of ceramic-conrete beams POT, ceramic insertion Miako and concrete. The staircase is monolithic reinforced concrete. The building is without basement, roofed by a warm flat roof.

The subject of this thesis is the design and project documentation of a new multifunctional house in Strakonice. The building has four floors, without basement, and is located on a slightly sloping land in the suburban part of the town of Strakonice. It is based on shallow foundations and covered with a flat roof. It is a transverse wall structural system, build with clay block masonry, with the semi-assembled ceiling structures of ceramic and concrete beams and inserts. It is conceived as a double-aisle layout. The ground floor of each wing consists of the establishment of shops and house facilities. The overground floors are designed as six residential units of varying size category. Both tracts have separate entrances to both the residential portion and to individual businesses. The building is designed from traditional building materials. In addition to the architectural construction and civil-engineering design, a part of this project is also a fire safety design and an assessment from the perspective of building physics.