Fire protection systems for building floors made of pultruded GFRP profiles. Part 1: Experimental investigations

This paper presents results of experimental investigations on the behaviour of GFRP pultruded profiles exposed to fire, in order to study the viability of their structural use in floors of buildings, taking into account the fulfilment of fire resistance requirements. The feasibility and efficacy of using three different protective coatings/layers, often used to protect structural steel, and a water cooling system to provide fire protection to GFRP pultruded profiles were investigated. The experimental programme included dynamic mechanical analyses (DMA), thermogravimetric and differential scanning calorimetry (TGA/DSC) experiments and fire resistance tests on GFRP tubular loaded beams. The unprotected GFRP beam failed after about 38 min, the three different passive protection systems provided a fire resistance between 65-76 min and the water cooling system provided a fire resistance of at least 120 min. Failure occurred in the upper part of the beams, due to compression and shear stresses. Results of these experiments allowed defining the field of application of each investigated solution, according to building code requirements. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.