Engineering Structures 87 (2015) 153161

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Engineering Structures
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/engstruct

Yield design-based analysis of high rise concrete walls subjected to fire

loading conditions
Duc Toan Pham a,, Patrick de Buhan b, Cline Florence a, Jean-Vivien Heck a, Hong Hai Nguyen a
a

Universit Paris-Est, Centre Scientifique et Technique du Btiment (CSTB), 84 avenue Jean Jaurs, Champs-sur-Marne, 77447 Marne-la-Valle Cedex 2, France
Universit Paris-Est, Laboratoire Navier (Ecole des Ponts ParisTech, IFSTTAR, CNRS UMR 8205), 6-8 avenue Blaise Pascal, Cit Descartes, Champs-sur-Marne, 77455
Marne-la-Valle Cedex 2, France
b

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 6 June 2014
Revised 13 January 2015
Accepted 14 January 2015
Available online 11 February 2015
Keywords:
High rise walls
Reinforced concrete
Fire loading
Yield design approach

a b s t r a c t
Relying on a simplified one dimensional beam-like schematization of the problem, a yield design-based
approach is developed for analyzing the potential failure of high rise walls (that are larger than the
dimensions of experimental test furnaces) under fire conditions. The implementation of the method combines two original features: first, the preliminary determination of interaction diagrams reflecting the
local decrease in strength of the wall due to thermal loading; second, the thermal-induced geometry
changes which are explicitly accounted for in the overall failure design of the wall. Application of the
approach is illustrated in either evaluating the fire resistance of a wall of given height or predicting
the maximum height that the wall could reach for a prescribed fire exposure time. First results of this
analysis point to the conclusion that wall failure due to fire loading is highly sensitive to its height.
! 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Assessing the ultimate load bearing performance of reinforced
concrete members subjected to fire exposure, and devising
appropriate design methods, have been the subject of an increasing
number of contributions in the last decades (see among many
others Lie and Celikkol [1], Lie and Irwin [2], Dotreppe et al. [3],
Franssen and Dotreppe [4] or El Fitiany and Youssef [5]). Quite
recently, attention has been more specifically focused on the determination of axial force-bending moment interaction diagrams of a
reinforced concrete section subjected to a fire induced temperature
gradient (Caldas et al. [6], Law and Gillie [7]). The yield design
approach in particular and its related lower and upper bound
methods (Chen [9], Salenon [10]) have proved to be a suitable
framework for determining such interaction diagrams in a rigorous
way, either under ambient temperature (Averbuch [11], Koechlin
and Potapov [12]), or when subjected to a temperature gradient
(Pham et al. [13]).
Increasingly involved in the construction of tall industrial buildings, high rise concrete walls are large size reinforced concrete
structures for which the evaluation of the fire resistance requires
a more sophisticated approach than for conventional, i.e. smaller
Corresponding author. Tel.: +33 1 61 44 81 89, +33 6 09 26 01 38; fax: +33 1 64
68 85 23.
E-mail
addresses:
phamductoanvn@yahoo.com,
ductoan.pham@cstb.fr
(D.T. Pham).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.engstruct.2015.01.022
0141-0296/! 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

size structures. Indeed, the sole degradation of the stiffness and

strength properties of reinforced concrete due to severe
temperature increase, cannot explain as such the collapse of these
structures. Due to the thermal-induced deformations, such slender
structures
exhibit
important
out-of-plane
(horizontal)
displacements, which in turn lead to an eccentricity of the gravity
load (self-weight) with respect to the initial undeformed
configuration. As a consequence, bending moments are generated
in the wall in addition to the pre-existing compressive axial force
distribution, which is usually known as a second order (or P-delta)
effect (see for instance the classical textbook by Bazant and Cedolin
[14]). As the eccentricity increases, the moment due to self-weight
eccentricity also increases, thus subjecting the wall to higher
bending moments and associated curvature deformations. At the
same time, but independently, elevated temperature leads to a
degradation of constituent materials. Consequently, it is the
conjunction of fire-induced material strength degradation with
developing bending effects which may trigger the overall failure
of the structure, even before the occurrence of any buckling
phenomenon.
The purpose of the present contribution is to extend the range of
application of the yield design approach (Salenon [10]) in order to
analyze the global stability of high rise walls, taking the geometry
changes induced by the thermal loading into account. This
contribution will demonstrate how it is possible to combine the
global deformed configuration analysis with that of the local
cross-sectional strength degradation. Unlike most of the classical

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D.T. Pham et al. / Engineering Structures 87 (2015) 153161

approaches which are based on conventional limitations of the

strains undergone by the concrete material and reinforcing steel,
the yield design approach only requires that stress (and not strain)
limitations be assigned to the constituent materials in the form of a
strength or failure criterion, with no consideration for other material properties, such as for instance the elastic stiffness characteristics. From a fundamental viewpoint, the yield design (or limit
analysis) reasoning is based on verifying the compatibility between
static equilibrium of a structure subjected to given loading conditions in a defined geometric configuration, and strength conditions
expressed through the above mentioned materials failure criteria,
thus avoiding to perform computational time consuming incremental calculations.
The main original feature of the present approach lies in the fact
that the geometric configuration of the high rise wall on which the
yield design approach is to be performed, is not known a priori, but
should be determined from a preliminary thermo-elastic calculation accounting for geometrically non-linear second order effects.
The paper is thus organised as follows. Section 2 describes the simplified one dimensional beam-column model adopted for the high
rise wall, the corresponding problem statement and the three-step
procedure employed for solving the latter. Section 3 is devoted to a
detailed presentation of step n"1 of the procedure, consisting in
predicting the thermal-induced deflected configuration of the
beam-wall, by means of a non-linear thermo-elastic analysis.
Section 4 essentially relies on the results of a previous paper (Pham
et al. [13]) making it possible to evaluate the local decrease of the
bearing capacity of reinforced concrete sections in the form of
temperature-dependent interaction curves (step n"2). Section 5 is
concerned with the implementation of the last step, aggregating
the results of the two previous steps, resulting in a final illustrative
application of the whole procedure presented in Section 5.
2. Problem statement and outline of solution procedure
The problem under consideration is the potential instability or
failure of a high rise reinforced concrete wall subjected to its
own weight on the one hand and to fire exposure on the other
hand. In the following, the boundary conditions on the lateral sides
of the wall are prescribed in such a way that it can be simply modelled as a one dimensional vertical beam as sketched in Fig. 1.
The beamlike wall is uniformly exposed to fire on one side as
well as to its self-weight. Following the standard curve of temperature versus time advocated by design codes [15] for modelling the
action of a fire on a structure, a heat transfer analysis may be firstly
carried out on the wall. In the case of a simple wall member such as
that considered here, one-dimensional heat propagation across the
wall thickness suggests that the field of temperature increase

resulting from such a thermal loading will depend on the thickness-coordinate only.
Fig. 1 provides a first insight into the basic mechanism which
may explain why failure of a high rise wall under fire loading
may occur. In its initial configuration, that is prior to fire loading,
the wall is a straight vertical beam subjected to its own vertical
weight, resulting in a linearly increasing distribution of axial compressive force N along the wall (Fig. 1(a)). The wall is generally
designed so as to avoid any buckling phenomenon, while the maximum compressive force at its base remains far below the compressive strength of the reinforced concrete section. As it will be
explained later on in more details, the transverse gradient of temperature due to fire exposure on one side of the wall will induce a
uniform thermal curvature of the beam and, as a direct consequence, out of plane transversal displacements will appear, leading
to a deformed configuration of the wall (Fig. 1(b)). Under such conditions, simple equilibrium considerations imply that any wall
cross section is subjected to a significant bending moment M in
addition to the already existing axial compressive force N.
Apart from this first decisive phenomenon which could be
attributed to an overall structural change of geometry (second
order effect), experimental evidence clearly shows that the severe
temperature increases associated with fire exposure, lead to an
important degradation of the stiffness as well as strength properties of the reinforced concrete materials, namely plain concrete
and steel reinforcements. It is the combined effect of these two
phenomena (change of geometry on the one hand, decay of the
material properties on the other hand) which may trigger the overall failure of the high rise wall.
The calculation and design procedure proposed and developed
in this paper is derived from the implementation of the above considerations and their formulations in a rigorous and mechanically
consistent framework. The analysis is performed in three main successive steps.
! Step n" 1. Determination of the wall deformed configuration and
generalized stress distribution. This step consists first in evaluating the equilibrium configuration of the wall under the combined action of thermal gradient and self-weight, then in
calculating the resulting local solicitations (axial force and
bending moment) in each section.
! Step n" 2. Determination of temperature dependent interaction
diagrams. The objective of this phase, which is completely
independent from the first one, is to determine the axial forcebending moment yield strength capacities of any wall crosssection as a function of the prescribed temperature gradient.
! Step n" 3. Yield analysis and design of the wall in its deformed
configuration determined in step n"1, on account of its reduced
strength properties evaluated in step n"2.
The whole calculation procedure is sketched in Fig. 2.
3. Step n" 1. Thermal-induced equilibrium configuration

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of a high rise wall subjected to fire loading: (a) initial and
(b) deformed configurations.

As mentioned earlier, the whole procedure is performed on a

simplified one dimensional model of the wall, schematized as an
initially straight vertical beam of height H, articulated at both ends
as shown in Fig. 3, the bottom end being kept fixed, while the top
end is free to translate vertically. The wall is subjected to its selfweight characterized by a constant linear density w and a uniform
temperature gradient along its height, resulting in a preliminary
deformed shape of equation uh(x), where u denotes the transversal
displacement. This thermal-induced change of geometry implies
an out-of-plane eccentricity of the self-weight and then additional
elastic bending deformations, resulting in a new equilibrium
deformed shape of equation u(x).

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D.T. Pham et al. / Engineering Structures 87 (2015) 153161

where a(y) is the coefficient of thermal expansion of the material

(concrete or reinforcing steel) located at level y in the wall
thickness.
The kinematics of each plane cross-section of the wall located at
point x, will be characterized by its mid-plane (y = 0) axial strain
eh(x) on the one hand, its curvature vh(x) on the other hand (see
Fig. 4), so that the total strain linear distribution is:

Heat transfer analysis

Thermal
gradient
Material
strength
degrada!on

Equilibrium
deformed
configura!on

Reduced
interac!on
diagrams

(N, M)
distribu!ons

ex; y eh x ' vh xy

Step n2

Step n1

Thermal
curvature

Step n3

Yield design assessment

Fig. 2. A three-step evaluation procedure for the yield design of fire loaded high rise
vertical walls.

The thermo-elastic constitutive behavior of concrete subjected

to temperature increase must take the so-called Load Induced
Thermal Strain (LITS: see for example Law and Gillie [8]) into
account. This is achieved here by considering that the concrete
Youngs modulus is a decreasing function of the temperature
increase, that is by applying a reduction factor to the modulus at
ambient temperature. Such a reduction factor, provided by Eurocode 2-Part 1-2 [18], is shown in Fig. 5, which also represent the
reduction factor applicable to steel reinforcement.
Thus, a linear thermo-elastic behavior of the concrete material
can be expressed by the following constitutive relationship:

!
"
rc ' r0c x; y Ec hy eh x ' vh xy ' eth
c y

ns ' n0s x; nk Ak Es hnk eh x ' vh xnk ' eth

s nk

where r0c x; y denotes the initial (that is prior to thermal loading)

stress distribution and Ec(h(y)) is the concrete Youngs modulus
which, as mentioned above, is dependent of the temperature
increase h(y). Similarly, the axial force in the steel reinforcement
n"k (k = 1 to K) located in the plane y = nk, may be expressed as:

Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of thermal and equilibrium deformed shapes of the wall
under fire loading.

Note that the high rise wall is not subjected to any other prescribed load than its self-weight, which means in particular that no
load is applied on its top. Consequently, assuming that the rotation
at any point of the deformed beam remains small enough, that is:

0 " x " H : jdu=dxj ju0 xj & 1

the axial compressive force N at any point x is simply equal to the

weight of the part of the beam of height Hx located above this
point. Hence the resulting linear distribution:

Nx wx ' H

which remains constant whatever the subsequent horizontal

deflections u experienced by the wall, provided that condition (1)
is satisfied.

Upon heating, the side of the wall exposed to fire and thus to
temperature increase tends to expand much more than its unexposed side, resulting in a global curvature of the wall which will
be first calculated as a function of the temperature increase across
the wall thickness h(y), 'h 6 y6+h, and the associated thermal
strain distribution eth(y) (see red1 dashed line in Fig. 4) equal to:

eth y ayhy

'h

rc ' r0c ydy

'

For interpretation of color in Figs. 4, 12 and 13 the reader is referred to the web
version of this article.

'h

yrc ' r

X
ns ' n0s nk 0;
k

0
c ydy

'

X
nk ns ' n0s nk 0
k

Introducing Eqs. (5) and (6) into Eqs. (7) leads to the following
solution:

eh

CD ' BE
AC ' B2

and

vh

BD ' AE
AC ' B2

where A, B, C, D, and E are constants calculated as:

A
B

3.1. Thermal deformed shape

'h " y " h :

in which n0s x; nk is the initial axial force, Ak the reinforcing bar

cross sectional area and Es(h(nk)) the temperature dependent steel
Youngs modulus.
Now the stress and axial force increments appearing in the left
hand members of the constitutive relationships (5) and (6) are
self-equilibrated, that is in equilibrium with zero resultant axial
force and bending moment:

C
D
E

'h
h

'h

'h

'h
h

'h

Ec hydy

X
Es hnk Ak ;
k

X
yEc hydy
nk Es hnk Ak ;
k

X 2
y Ec hydy
nk Es hnk Ak ;
2

Ec hyeth
c ydy

X
Es hnk eth
s nk Ak ;
k

X
yEc hyeth
nk Es hnk eth
c ydy
s nk Ak
k

Therefore, the resulting axial strain and curvature are constant

along the wall height, and it can be easily verified that D = E = 0 and
then eh = vh = 0 when eth(y) = h(y) = 0.

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D.T. Pham et al. / Engineering Structures 87 (2015) 153161

Fig. 4. Strain and stress distributions in a reinforced concrete wall section due to the application of a fire-induced temperature gradient.

or on account of (11):

Decrease of Young's modulus

Mh x

0.8

Concrete

0.6

Steel

0.2

Drc x; y Ec hyDex ' Dvxy

Dns x; nk Ak Es hnk Dex ' Dvxnk
0

300

600

Temperature (C)

900

1200

Fig. 5. Reduction factors of concrete and steel reinforcement Youngs modulus as

functions of temperature increase (Eurocode 2-Part 1-2).

It follows that the thermal deformed shape of the wall is characterized by the out-of-plane displacement uh(x) such that:
2

d uh
vh
dx2

10

Integrating twice the above differential equation immediately

yields, on account of the boundary conditions uh(x = 0)=
uh(x = H) = 0:

vh
2

xx ' H

1
xx ' H
2qh

11

where qh represents the constant radius of curvature of the wall.

The condition (1) of small rotation at any point of the beam is
satisfied as far as qh ) H.
3.2. Total deformed shape as a result of second order effect

14

which may be incorporated into the equilibrium conditions:

'h

Drc ydy

'

uh x

13

In order to calculate the additional bending deformations associated with this moment distribution, the same kind of reasoning
as that previously used for evaluating the thermal-induced deformations of the wall will be performed. Denoting by DN(x) and
DM(x) the increments of solicitations applied to any section of
the wall located at point x, and by De(x) and Dv(x) the corresponding elastic response in terms of mid-plane axial strain and curvature increments at this same section, we can write the following
constitutive relations similar to (5) and (6):

0.4

w
xH ' x5H ' 4x
12qh

h
'h

X
k

Dns nk DN;

yDrc ydy '

X
nk Dns nk DM

15

&%

16

leading to the following linear relations:

DN
DM

&

'B

'B C

De
Dv

&

where the expressions of coefficients A, B, and C are given by (9).

Since in the present situation DN(x) = 0 and DM(x) = Mh(x), we
finally obtain:
2

Dvx
where

d
Mh x
Dux+
EIh
dx2

17

EIh C ' B2 =A

18

the wall section flexural stiffness under pure bending. Relations (9)
show that in the particular case of a homogeneous concrete section
reinforced by two symmetrically placed steel bars (y = n) at ambient temperature, B = 0 and the expression of this coefficient simplifies to:

The thermal-induced change of geometry characterized by the

parabolic Eq. (11), entails an eccentricity of the self-weight w with
respect to the initial vertical plane and thus a bending moment distribution Mh(x). Owing to the fact that the wall, modelled as a
curved beam, is statically determinate, the bending moment distribution can be straightforwardly calculated as follows:

EIh20, C

#
$
Z
Z H
x'H H
M h x w
uh sds
uh s ' uh x+ds
H
0
x

The integration of Eq. (17), on account of (13) along with the

boundary conditions, gives:

12

h
C2
Ec n2 As Es
3

19

3.3. A simple iterative procedure

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D.T. Pham et al. / Engineering Structures 87 (2015) 153161

u1 x uh x Dux

20

12

with:

Dux

h
i
w
xx ' H 12x3 ' 33Hx2 17H2 x ' H
720qh EIh

corresponding to the following updated expression for the bending

moment distribution calculated through Eq. (12) where uh has to be
replaced by u1:

Height (m)

M 1 x M h x

w2
xx ' H20x4 ' 76Hx3 89H2 x2 ' 11H3 x ' 28H4 +
1440qh EIh
22

ux lim ui x and Mx lim Mi x

i!1

24

n!1

3.4. Comparison with results of analytical model and numerical

simulations

26

which, in conjunction with the thermo-elastic constitutive

relationship:
2

d
ux ' uh x+
dx2

0.6

0.8

1.2

10

u (x)

u(x)

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.2

Displacement (m)
Fig. 7. Initial thermal-induced and final equilibrated deformed configurations of a
wall as a function of height.

As an alternative to the above described iterative procedure, a

(semi)analytical closed-form solution to the above problem can
be worked out directly. Indeed, expressing the equilibrium on
the (unknown) final deformed configuration, one gets the following integral equation:

#
$
Z
Z H
x'H H
Mx w
usds
us ' ux+ds
H
0
x

0.4

12

25

Furthermore, as it can be clearly seen from Fig. 7, the difference

between the initial thermal-induced deformation uh and the fully
equilibrated configuration u is becoming significant for high rise
walls only (namely H > 8 m, for a wall thickness of 0.15 m). The
deformed shape and corresponding out-of-plane displacements
of the wall due to thermal loading are strongly increasing with
the height. While for the 6 m-high wall, the additional horizontal
displacement due to further elastic bending associated to the
self-weight eccentricity, remains negligible, the response is quite
different for the 10-m and 12-m high walls. Fig. 7 for instance
shows that the maximum deflection of the 12-m high wall is more
than five times larger than that of the 6-m wall (1.10 m instead of
0.20 m).

0.2

Fig. 6. Sequence of wall deformed configurations obtained from the iterative

procedure (note that the abscissa scale is strongly dilated).

Height (m)

u2 x u3 x ux lim un x

Displacement (m)

The corresponding distributions of axial force Nx wx ' H

and bending moment M(x) may be represented in a form of a curve
drawn in the (N, M) plane as shown in Fig. 3.
Such an iterative procedure, which could appear time consuming, actually remains quite simple, since only easily tractable polynomial forms are involved for both the total deformed shape and
bending moment distribution. As seen for example in Fig. 6, the
deformed shapes corresponding to the second and the third iterations are almost coincident with the converged solution:

Mx EIh

u1 (x)

23

resulting in a new polynomial expression u2, of degree 8, for the

wall deformed shape. This procedure is carried out until convergence of the sequence of computed transversal displacements is
observed:
i!1

u (x)

d
u2 x ' uh x+
dx2

The same iterative procedure can be applied once again by solving the second order differential equation:

M 1 x EIh

u2(x) u 3 (x )

10

21

27

and after derivation with respect to x, leads to the following third

order differential equation:

d
w
d
ux
H ' x ux c
EIh
dx
dx3

28

where c is a constant to be determined.

The exact solution to the latter equation can be found making
use of hypergeometric functions as proposed for instance by Sampaio and Hundhausen [16] for analyzing the buckling of a beamcolumn subjected to its own weight.
In addition, a numerical simulation of the same problem has
been carried out for comparison purposes, with the help of a finite
element software [17], able to take large displacements, and hence
geometry changes, into account in the analysis of a structure such
as a high rise wall under fire loading. Fig. 8 clearly demonstrates
that the three calculation methods (iterative procedure, analytical
and numerical models) produce results which are in excellent
agreement with each other.

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D.T. Pham et al. / Engineering Structures 87 (2015) 153161

12

10

Height (m)

6
Fig. 9. Auxiliary yield design problem: reinforced concrete wall section subjected to
the combined action of axial force and bending moment.

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.2

Displacement (m)
Fig. 8. Comparison of predictions from iterative, analytical and numerical methods
on the problem of the stability of a high rise wall under combined self-weight and
thermal loading.

4. Step n" 2: determination of temperature dependent

interaction diagrams (Pham et al. [13])
As mentioned earlier, independently of the change of geometry
and related development of bending moment distributions along
the wall, the fire-induced temperature increase has a quite significant impact in terms of material properties degradation. Based
upon experimental evidence, empirical relationships have thus
been established linking the reduction of material stiffness and
strength properties to the temperature increase [18]. This will have
obvious consequences on the wall bending stiffness, as already
pointed out in the previous section; but still more importantly
on its resistance usually expressed in terms of axial force-bending
moment interaction diagrams.
A companion paper (Pham et al. [13]) has been specifically dedicated to the determination of such axial force-bending moment
interaction diagrams of a reinforced concrete section when
subjected to a fire-induced temperature increase, through a
straightforward computational procedure based upon the yield
design (or limit analysis) theory. The key input data of the analysis
was the introduction of the above referred experimentally-based
relationships between the degradation of local material strength
properties and the fire-induced temperature increase. The interaction diagram associated with a prescribed temperature profile
across the wall thickness has been thus exactly determined from
implementing both the lower bound static and upper bound kinematic methods. The key points and main results of the analysis
are recalled hereafter.
4.1. Solving an auxiliary yield design problem
With reference to an orthonormal coordinate system Oxyz
(Fig. 9), the interaction diagrams are determined from the solution
to a yield design problem defined on a reinforced concrete wall section modelled as a square parallelepiped of thickness 2h along the
Oy-axis, and lengths conventionally taken equal to unity along the
Ox and Oz-axes (see Pham et al. [13], for more details). It consists of
homogeneous concrete reinforced by longitudinal steel bars placed
along the Ox-direction. Such a reinforced concrete beam is subjected to mechanical loading conditions defined as follows.

! body forces (weight) are taken equal to zero;

! the left hand section (x = 0) is in smooth contact with a fixed
and rigid vertical punch, while the right hand section (x = 1) is
in smooth contact with a rigid punch in horizontal translation
of velocity at mid-plane level (y = 0) and rotation of angular
velocity about the z-axis;
! the four remaining sides of the wall section are stress free.
Considering any kinematically admissible (K.A.) velocity field U,
defined as complying with the velocity boundary conditions
depending on d_ and a_ , the work of the external forces in any such

field, may be put in the following form:

W e U Nd_ M a_

29

where N and M may be interpreted as the axial force along Ox and

bending moment about Oz exerted on the right hand side of the wall
section, which can easily be calculated from the stress distribution
across the wall thickness. The representative wall section is thus
subjected to a two-parameter loading mode.
According to the yield design reasoning (see among others the
quite recent textbook by Salenon [19]), the so-called domain K
of potentially safe loads (N, M), is defined as the set of loads which
can be equilibrated by a stress distribution in the beam (stress tensor fields in the concrete, tensile force distributions along the reinforcements), verifying the respective strength limitations of
concrete and steel at any point of the wall. The boundary of this
domain, locus of the extreme or failure loads, is called the interaction diagram of the reinforced concrete wall section subjected to
combined axial and bending loadings.
The strength properties of the constituent materials are specified as follows:
(a) The plain concrete material obeys a truncated Mohr-Coulomb
strength criterion characterized by its uniaxial tensile and
compressive resistances denoted by ft and fc, respectively.
According to experimentally established relationships, such
characteristics take the form:

f t y kt hyf t ;

f c y kc hyf c

30

where kt and kc are non-dimensional coefficients decreasing

with temperature h, and thus depending on the y-coordinate,
conventionally equal to one for h = 20 "C (ambient
temperature).
(b) Likewise, any longitudinal reinforcing bar n"k of crosssection Ak, located at y = nk, is made of a steel of uniaxial
tensile-compressive yield strength equal to fy, so that the
overall strength of the bar under tensile or compressive axial
force may be expressed as:

n0 nk ks hnk f y Ak

31

where ks is a non-dimensional decreasing function of temperature increase.

D.T. Pham et al. / Engineering Structures 87 (2015) 153161

4.2. Interaction diagram as a two-parameter yield surface

Given any value e, comprised between 'h and +h, the two
following uniaxial stress fields in concrete, along with axial forces
in the reinforcements are considered (see Fig. 10). It simply means
that in configuration (a) both concrete and reinforcing bars reach
their positive tensile (resp. negative compressive) strengths when
located below (resp. above) the plane of equation y = e. The
opposite applies in configuration (b).
It can be immediately observed that the above stress distributions, depending on the eccentricity parameter e, automatically
satisfy the respective strength conditions of the concrete material
and steel reinforcing bars. Besides, they satisfy the equilibrium
equations in the absence of body forces, while the discontinuity
of stress when crossing the y = e plane remains admissible. The corresponding values of the loading parameters in equilibrium with
such stress distributions may be easily calculated, leading to the
determination of a yield surface in the (N, M)-plane, which represents a lower bound to the interaction diagram. As explained in
much more details in (Pham et al. [13]) this lower bound solution
could be recovered from implementing the upper bound kinematic
approach of yield design. It therefore describes the exact failure
curve (interaction diagram) in the (N, M)-plane. It should be
emphasized that the solution thus obtained has also been favourably compared with Eurocode-based predictions in the case of
ambient temperature, as well as with available experimental
results (Pham et al. [13]).
A final, but important, comment should be made regarding the
possible role played by thermal stresses in the determination of
the interaction diagram. Apart from deteriorating the material
properties of the reinforced concrete components, fire loading conditions imply quite significant changes of the initial state of the
structure due to the generation of thermo-mechanical stresses. It
is clear however, that such stress fields are self-equilibrated (that
is in equilibrium with N = M = 0), having as a consequence no
influence on the values of the limit loads and thus of the interaction
diagram. Indeed, it is a well-known result of associated elastoplasticity and related limit analysis theorems (see among many other
references Salenon [20] or de Buhan [21]), that such limit or failure
loads are independent of the elastic characteristics, loading path
followed up to them or, still more decisively, initial state of stress
of the structure, due for instance to a previously applied thermal
loading. As a consequence, the sole influence to be expected from
fire loading on the interaction diagram of the reinforced concrete
wall section must be attributed to the degradation of the concrete
and steel strength properties.

159

5. Step n" 3: stability analysis of the wall in its deformed

configuration
5.1. Principle of the method
On account of the knowledge of the local solicitations (N,
M)(x) along the wall determined from step n"1 on the one hand,
and strength capacities (interaction diagrams) of the heated
cross-section calculated in step n"2 on the other hand, the
process could now be completed. Assessing the stability of the
structure (in the sense of yield design) simply consists in
comparing the combined bending moments-axial forces distributions resulting from the equilibrium of the wall in its deformed
configuration, with the interaction diagram modified by the
application of thermal loading.
More precisely, for a given height and a given fire exposure, the
stability of a wall is ensured as far as the curve representing the
solicitation distribution along the wall height remains entirely
inside the strength domain delimited by the interaction diagram
in the (N, M)-plane. Collapse occurs at the section where the curve
of solicitation distribution becomes tangent to the interaction diagram as shown in Fig. 11. It should be noted that the failure of one
section, as considered in this approach, implies the complete failure of the entire wall. This is due to the fact that the considered
wall-beam structure is statically determinate, the first yield point
and ultimate limit load being coincident.
5.2. Implementing the method on an illustrative example
For illustrative purpose, the approach is now implemented on
the problem stated above. The following example will help clarify
and quantify the negative effect of high temperature increase on
the stability of such slender structures in two different ways: the
degradation of the wall strength capacities expressed through the
reduced interaction diagram on the one hand, the thermal-induced
out-of-plane change of geometry of the wall which generates
bending moments in addition to compressive loads on the other
hand.
Assuming that the wall is exposed to an ISO 834 fire [15] on its
right hand face with different time durations (60, 90 and 120 min),
the following set of quite representative data has been selected:
! Rectangular cross-section 0.15 . 1 m2.
! Normal weight concrete with siliceous aggregates exhibiting
the following strength characteristics at ambient temperature
(20 "C): fc = 32 MPa, ft = 2.5 MPa.

Fig. 10. Stress profiles in the wall cross-section used in the lower bound static approach of yield design.

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D.T. Pham et al. / Engineering Structures 87 (2015) 153161

0.12

0.06

90 min
60 min

0 min

M (MNm/m)

120 min

-0.06

Fig. 11. Principle of the stability analysis of the wall in its deformed configuration.

! Two symmetrically placed layers of 10 hot rolled steel reinforcing bars of diameter 6 mm with 3 cm of concrete cover at top
and bottom: fy = 500 MPa.
! Material properties are considered to be temperature dependent according to experimental curves provided by Eurocode
2-Part 1-2 [18].
! Constant vertical self-weight density of w = 3.5 kN/m.
A preliminary heat transfer analysis, aimed at evaluating the
temperature increase distribution across the wall thickness, should
be first conducted. Fig. 12 displays the temperature profiles across
the wall thickness obtained for instance by the SAFIR computer program [22], corresponding to 0, 60, 90 and 120 min fire durations.
Introducing these thermal gradients into the step n"2 calculation procedure presented in Section 4, the corresponding interaction diagrams could be determined as shown in Fig. 13. It thus
clearly appears from the latter figure, that temperature increase
affects the strength properties of the reinforced concrete section,
in the form of a quite significant reduction of the strength domain.
The fire loading leads to an increase of temperature (Fig. 12),
resulting in a decrease of material strength parameters associated
with a shrinkage of the interaction diagram (Fig. 13), and thus to
a much smaller global resistance of the reinforced concrete wall.
Focussing on a given fire exposure, say 120 min, for which the
interaction diagram (represented by the closed red curves of
Figs. 12 and 13) remains constant, our objective will be first to
determine from which height failure of the wall will occur.

-5.5

-3.5

-1.5

-0.12

0.5

N (MN/m)
Fig. 13. Evolution of the interaction diagrams as a function of fire exposure.

As already observed for instance in Fig. 7, the higher the wall,

the larger is the relative difference between the thermal deformed
shape and the total deformed shape. As a practical consequence,
such a second order effect has no significant influence on the global
fire stability of normal height walls (apart from the strength reduction which remains the same), but becomes much more critical for
high rise walls. This decisive point is further illustrated in Fig. 14
where, for clarity purpose, the region of the (N, M)-plane close to
the origin has been magnified. It may be observed from this figure
that the solicitation curve intersects the interaction diagram as
soon as the wall becomes higher than 12 m. More precisely, it
may be shown that collapse occurs for a wall of about 11.4 m-high
(corresponding solicitation curve becoming tangent to the interaction diagram), whereas it still remains well below the interaction
diagram for a 10-m high wall (purple dashed line).
Conversely, for a 13-m high wall, the minimum fire duration for
which collapse occurs can also be estimated from the above
described procedure.
In such a case, as shown in Fig. 15, the increase of fire exposure
duration results in a lowering of the interaction diagram, simultaneously to an expansion of the solicitation curve, due to the change
0.12

15
0.09

0.03

120 min

12m

0.03

10m

90 min
60 min

6m

0 min
0

600

(C)

900

1200

Fig. 12. Calculated temperature profiles across the wall thickness for different fire
exposures.

-4

-0.03

-0.05
300

0.06

M (MNm)

Thickness (cm)

12

0
-3

-2

-1

-0.06

N (MN)
Fig. 14. Yield design analysis of walls of different heights exposed to a given fire
exposure of 120 min.

D.T. Pham et al. / Engineering Structures 87 (2015) 153161

60 min

0.04

90 min

0.03

120 min
M (MNm)

0.02

0.01

-0.06

wH

0
-0.04

-0.02

N (MN)
Fig. 15. Yield design-based analysis of a 13 m-high wall.

of geometry. Failure occurs when the two corresponding curves

come into contact. In the present case Fig. 15 indicates that the
wall of height 13 m will not resist more than 90 min in fire, the
critical section being located at about 5 m from the bottom of
the wall.
6. Concluding remarks
Based on a simplified one-dimensional modelling of the problem, this paper has proposed and developed a rigorous, comprehensive and consistent approach for evaluating the fire resistance
of high rise concrete walls. The method is based on the application
of the yield design theory at two stages: first as regards the determination of the wall strength capacities expressed in the form of
an interaction diagram parameterized by the thermal loading; then
as concerns the analysis of the load-bearing capacity of the wall in
its fire-induced deformed configuration. The entire procedure has
been implemented on an illustrative case study illustrating each
step of the evaluation process, making it possible to highlight both
fire effects on the individual members strength properties and second order effects due to thermal-induced geometry changes.
Among the first most important conclusions that can be drawn
from the results of this case study, is the fact that the failure of
the wall is extremely sensitive to an even relatively slight increase
of its height.
Due to its simplicity, mainly attributable to the (semi)analytical
formulations involved in the analysis, the model and related
calculation procedure are particularly well suited for a preliminary
engineering design of high rise wall in fire, providing useful guidelines in the crucial matter of structural safety assessment. It allows
performing parametric studies in a rather quick way, without it
being necessary to resort to complex numerical simulations.
Furthermore the procedure could easily be generalized to more
complex thermal loading conditions, due for instance to the fact
that the wall is not uniformly exposed to fire along its whole height.

161

Of course, the main limitation of the present approach lies in its

inability to still provide reliable predictions as soon as the simplified one-dimensional beam model adopted in this contribution, is
no more valid. This is for instance the case of rectangular reinforced concrete panels, the lateral vertical sides of which are simply supported, thus preventing out-of-plane displacements along
the wall four edges. The structure is then to be adequately schematized as a two-dimensional plate (or slab), but the general principle
of the procedure described in this paper remains exactly the same.
To that end, developments are currently under way concerning
the formulation of a strength criterion of the plate expressed in
terms of in-plane membrane forces and bending moments, thereby
extending the usual concept of interaction diagrams. Furthermore,
owing to the fact that, unlike for the simple beam model, the structure is no longer statically determinate, the questions of thermalinduced change of geometry and yield design assessment in the
deformed configuration have to be considered in a somewhat more
complex framework.
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