Civil Engineering Association

British Steel, Swinden Technology Centre, in collaboration with the Building Research Establishment recentlya large European research initiative to study the behaviour of a steel framed multi- storey building subjectedfire attack. The overall objective was to gain a greater understanding of the natural fire resistance of suchfistructures, to correlate existing predictive numerical models and to establish the basis for a new more rational mlesign methodology for steel framed buildings subject to fire attack. Qlhis publication introduces the research project as a whole and, in particular, summarises the results of six major fire tests carried out within the eight storey steel framed structure located within the BRE Large ,,Building Test Facility at Cardington, Bedfordshire. It was found that this composite steel framed building possessed a very significant degree of inherent fireresistance even although the steel floor beams remained entirely unprotected against fire attack. The detailed results of the fire test programme represent a very significant contribution to the development of structural fire engineering and will lead, together with the associated numerical analyses, to a morelogical approach to the designof steel framed buildings in fire