Failure load predictions of composite structures during fire

Abstract: Fire response simulations on composite materials gets increasingly
important, as the materials are used for load carrying structures, such as
in military and commercial ships. Real life fire tests are expensive and
classifying a new material for usage can be costly.

A methodology has been derived for designing composite structures for fire
safety. Fire simulation software such as Com Fire and Csp Fire as well as
the FE-software Ansys have been tested and validated. The simulation software
proved to have severe stability issues and could not be used to get
trustworthy simulation results. It was also shown that the effects of the
material degradation were negligible and hence only thermo-mechanical
simulations were used in the methodology. Also an Excel tool has been
created to perform simplified failure load predictions.