Improvement of fire door design using experimental and numerical modelling investigations
Journal of Structural Fire Engineering
ISSN: 2040-2317
Article publication date: 23 November 2021
Issue publication date: 29 April 2022
Abstract
Purpose
Fire door should withstand a high temperature without deforming. In the current paper, the challenges of improving the behaviour of the conventional fire door were described using various internal stiffeners in pair swinging-type fire door.
Design/methodology/approach
The temperature distribution on the outside door surface was measured with distributed eight thermocouples. Subsequently the internal side was cooled with pressurized water hose jet stream of 4 bar. The transient simulation for the thermal and structure analysis was conducted using finite element modelling (FEM) with ANSYS 19. The selected cross sections during numerical simulation were double S, double C and hat omega stiffeners applied to 2.2 m and 3 m door length.
Findings
During the FEM analysis, the maximum deformations were 7.2028, 5.4299, 5.023 cm for double S, double C and hat omega stiffeners for 2.2 m door length and 6.57, 4.26, 2.1094 cm for double S, double C and hat omega stiffeners for 3 m door length. Finally, hat omega gives more than three times reduction in the deformation of door compared to double S stiffeners which provided a reference data to the manufacturers.
Research limitations/implications
The research limitation included the limited number of fire door tests due to the high cost of single test, and the research implication was to achieve an optimal study in fire door design.
Practical implications
Achieving the optimum design for the internal door stiffeners where the hat omega stiffener gives minimum door deformation compared to the other stiffeners was considered the practical implication. The work included two experimental fire door tests according to the standard fire test (ANSI/UL 10C – Positive Pressure of Fire Tests of Door Assemblies) for a door of 2.2 m length with double S stiffeners and a door of 3 m length with hat omega stiffeners, which achieved minimum deformation.
Originality/value
The behavior and mechanical response of door leaf were improved through using internal hat omega stiffeners under fire testing. This study was achieved using FEM in ANSYS 19 for six cases of different lengths and stiffeners for fire doors. The simulation model showed a very close agreement with the experimental results with an error of 0.651% for double S and 1.888% for hat omega.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work has been funded by the Radwan for Trading and Industry (City Metal), Company- Qalyub–Egypt. The authors gratefully acknowledge this support.
Conflict of interest: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Citation
Khalifa, M.A., Aziz, M.A., Hamza, M., Abdo, S. and Gaheen, O.A. (2022), "Improvement of fire door design using experimental and numerical modelling investigations", Journal of Structural Fire Engineering, Vol. 13 No. 2, pp. 205-223. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSFE-07-2021-0048
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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