Enhancing fire engineering and ASCE standards

By Peter Murphy

Negar Elhami Khorasani received the Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) young professional scholarship by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) earlier this year, and is one of four advisors working with structural engineering firms to develop performance-based structural fire engineering design case studies in accordance with the ASCE/ SEI 7-16 Appendix E industry standard.

The team of structural engineers and researchers will work to quantify the fire exposure and structural behavior of current building designs during fire. ASCE/SEI and the Charles Pankow Foundation are working together to develop and publish the information.

Elhami Khorasani also recently published a paper detailing her work advancing performance-based design for fire engineering in the United States. In general, the design of fire protection in the performance-based fire engineering approach is based on calculating a structure’s performance under realistic fire scenarios.  The performance-based design has the potential to unlock robust and cost-effective design solutions that are also applicable to complex architectural configurations. According to Elhami Khorasani, “the results show that designing a structure to take on a thermal load is a superior solution compared to protecting elements with insulation for multi-hazard scenarios.

You can read Elhami Khorasani’s paper by visiting this link.