Performance-based design for structures in fire: Recent experimental and computational advances

Associate Professor

Department of Civil and Systems Engineering 

Johns Hopkins University

The response of structures to fire is a crucial component of the safety and resilience of the built environment. While structural engineers explicitly consider gravity, wind, and earthquake-induced forces in their design, they often rely on prescriptive rules to mitigate fire hazard. However, developing an understanding of the anticipated behavior of structures in fire provides benefits as it allows engineers to assess risk, safely innovate, and quantify the performance of candidate designs to meet design goals. To enable such assessments, engineers must have access to the appropriate models and analysis tools. 

This presentation will be divided into two parts. First, we will outline a framework for performance-based structural fire design, and discuss methods for characterizing fire exposure, material response, and structural response under fire conditions. Then, we will highlight recent research on the fire behavior of structural systems with steel and concrete materials. Through these studies, we will show how the combination of experimental testing and computational modeling advances our understanding of structural fire performance and unlocks benefits in terms of cost, safety, sustainability, and resilience.

Thomas Gernay is an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Systems Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, where he founded and leads the Multi-Hazard Resilient Structures group. His research focuses on structural fire engineering, computational mechanics, risk and resilience, and performance-based design.

A recipient of the NSF CAREER award, Thomas has also received the AISC Terry Peshia Early Career Faculty Award, the NFPA Foundation Medal, the IAFSS Magnusson Early Career Award, and the ASCE Maryland Outstanding Educator of the Year Award. He is co-author of SAFIR®, a nonlinear finite element software widely used to model the fire performance of structures.

Thomas currently serves as co-Chair of the ASCE SEI Fire Protection Committee, a voting member of ACI 216, chair of the Scientific Committee of the Structures in Fire (SiF) conference series, and associate editor for ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering and Springer’s Fire Technology. He holds a PhD from the University of Liege and was a Fulbright postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University.