Chapter 37 handbook map — links to 10 educational topic pages on structural fire safety (Chen & Lui).

Scope

CivilTech notes on structural fire behaviour and design. Not a substitute for project codes, approvals, or peer review.

Regulatory context. South African projects follow National Building Regulations, SANS 10400, and cited material standards; use this material as orientation only.

Using this page

Context — Cross-check these notes with your project fire strategy and the code edition on the job.
Tools — The Fire Engineering page has ISO 834 and steel-retention calculators for quick checks.
Approval — Fire resistance and structural fire design remain subject to the local authority and appointed engineers.

Fire engineering — Topic index

Jump to a focused note on each part of the structural fire workflow. Each link opens a short CivilTech page.

Topics

Fire characteristics — stages of fire, temperature–time curves, standard vs natural fires.
Thermal actions on structures — heat transfer modes and thermal boundary conditions.
Material behavior at elevated temperatures — steel, concrete, timber, and composites.
Structural response to fire — expansion, restraint, instability, and failure modes.
Fire resistance of structural members — beams, columns, slabs, and walls.
Design methods for fire conditions — prescriptive, performance-based, and analytical routes.
Fire protection systems — passive and active protection.
Structural fire engineering considerations — actions in fire, robustness, progressive collapse.
Fire testing and standards — furnace tests, ratings, and codes.
Advanced topics in structural fire engineering — performance-based design, fire modelling, analysis.

Diagram sources

This topic index has no figures; it only links to CivilTech structural fire notes. Pages that include diagrams list credits in their own Diagram sources section.