Significance of heat transfer models for steel elements with and without insulation

Performance-based fire engineering codes allow the design of structures to be based on engineering principles. For the calculation of temperatures for structural elements in fire, analytical solutions using heat transfer models are commonly used. In this paper, an overview of the various heat transfer models being used by different countries is given and the bases of those models examined. In particular, the temperature prediction of steel elements using different heat transfer models is carried out for comparison purposes. The comparison will be performed for steel elements with and without insulation. Usually, insulation materials have low conductivity of heat. As a result, the use of the various models of heat transfer between the fire and the surface of the insulation has little effect on the accuracy in predicting the temperature rise of the steel element. This is not the case for a steel element without insulation protection. It is also shown that most of the calculations for temperature prediction can be performed efficiently on spreadsheets.