Comparison of different CFD-FEM coupling methods in advanced structural fire analysis

The research approach of multi-physical field coupling can be used to analyze the structural fire resistance problem. In the process of numerical simulation, multiple coupling interfaces are involved. Regarding fluid-thermal-solid coupling, most of the previous numerical studies on structural fire resistance have used the adiabatic surface temperature (AST) parameters in order to accurately describe complex boundary conditions in fire analysis. This approach belongs to the iterative coupling form, and the other type of direct coupling form is rarely used. In this paper, the specific scenario of a steel column surrounded by fire source is selected as a typical case to explore the thermodynamic phenomena of the steel column. Based on the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method, the fire model analysis in the fluid domain was first implemented to investigate the distribution laws of the spatial velocity and temperature fields. Then the fluid-thermal-solid coupling was realized via iterative coupling (Adiabatic Surface Temperature method, AST method) and direct coupling (Full Conjugate Heat Transfer method, FCHT method) respectively to obtain the steel column temperatures. The accuracy of these two coupling methodologies was verified by comparing their results with the experimental data, and the accuracy of AST method depends on the reasonable sampling of fire analysis results. Following this, structural model analysis was completed using the solid temperature as the boundary condition to achieve the solid thermal-mechanical coupling. The yield strength degradation of the steel column after heating was explored. Finally, the non-necessity of fluid-mechanical-solid coupling in structural fire resistance was discussed.