On the Chinese Code on fire safety design of steel building structures

This work introduces to the international scientific community the Chinese Code on fire safety design of steel building structures. The aim of the Code is to prevent the structure of a steel building subjected to fire from collapsing, ensure safe evacuation of building occupants, and reduce the cost for repairing the damages of the structure caused by fire. The main contents of the Code is presented in this paper, including the fire duration requirements of structural components, fundamental requirements on fire safety design of steel components, temperature increasing of atmosphere and components in fire, loading effect and capacity of various components in fire, and procedure for fire-resistant design of steel components. The analytical approach is employed in the Code and the effectiveness of the Code is validated through experiments.