Design masonry walls in a fire situation for building with multiple floors: national x international standards

Abstract

Masonry wall is a constructive system in which the walls have a structural function. Brazilian standards do not include requirements for structural design of this construction system under fire situations. Thus, the present work had as objective to design a building with four floors, following the Brazilian normative criteria, by means of inserting, where there was necessity, European standard criteria. The tabular method and the simplified analytical method were employed. In addition, a comparative analysis of the main processes described in both studied standards were carried out. The tabular method showed that the minimum wall thickness to resist the required time of fire resistance of 30 minutes is 100 mm, which attends the design of 140 mm. The simplified analytical method of calculation resulted a relative difference between the design resistance at ambient temperature and fire situations of about 12.5%. It was concluded that the analysis of structural masonry under fire condition is of paramount importance in the design, which can be a decisive factor in determining the strength of the block and, therefore, should be added to the current Brazilian national standard.