Prof. Gamal Elsayed Abdelaziz :: Publications:

The current research studied the effect of elevated fire temperature and cooling regime on the fire resistance of self-compacting concrete (SCC) and normal concrete (NC). Both concretes were exposed to elevated degrees of fire temperature of 200, 400, 600 and 800 °C. In addition, the temperature was maintained at 800 °C while the exposure durations have been increased to 15, 30, 60 and 120 minutes. After that the samples were cooled to room temperature using three different cooling regimes namely; air cooling, CO2 powder cooling and water cooling. Reductions in both compressive and tensile strength results along with the extent of spalling were examined. The effect of fire and cooling regime on both porosity and absorption capacity of SCC and NC were also investigated. The results indicated that residual compressive and tensile strengths of SCC are generally higher than those of NC. In other words, elevated fire temperature is more damaging to the NC compared with SCC. Same has been confirmed by the obtained results of spalling which were found to be higher for NC compared with those of SCC. The results also indicated that adopting CO2 powder as a cooling regime provided the least extent of damage to both NC and SCC concretes while water cooling regime provided the greatest damage. It is worth mentioning that the incorporation of polypropylene fibre improved the fire resistance of concrete regardless of the concrete type and cooling regime. Increasing the dosage of self-compacting admixture did not significantly affect the mechanical properties and fire resistance of SCC.