Fire testing of an earthquake damaged RC frame

Fires are a relatively likely event consequent to earthquakes in urban locations and in general are an integral part of the emergency response strategies focused on life safety in most developed economies. Similarly building regulations in most countries require engineers to consider the effect of seismic and fire loading on the structures to provide an adequate level of resistance to these hazards, however only on a separate basis. To the authors knowledge there are no current regulations that require buildings to consider these hazards in a sequential manner to quantify the compound loading and design for the required resistance. It is accepted that in many cases this may not be feasible or even desirable, but on the other hand there will be many high value structures where it would be economically and technically sensible to provide such resistance. This paper will describe a collaborative project currently underway involving two universities in India (IIT Roorkee and IISc) and the University of Edinburgh to investigate the fire resistance of earthquake damaged RC structures.