Structural Fire Investigation

Buildings damaged by the fires are a highly recurring phenomenon. This is leading to improve prevention procedures and to conduct more efficient investigations. The purpose of this thesis is to present an investigation methodology known as Structural Fire Investigation, which aims at identifying the causes, both pre-existing and latent, that led to a fire incident. Such investigation includes structural and forensic operations ranging from the gathering of initial information to evidence sampling and from document analysis to computational tests. At the base of the investigative methodology, there is the error analysis, the consequent causes, the effects that the fire produces in the scene and the consequences in the structure. It starts from analysis of accidents and then describes the fire event and the methodologies used to investigate which is also suggested by the NFPA 921 Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations in which the importance of Fire Investigation is described even from the structural point of view. The starting point of this work is the occurrence of historical fire incidents at an international level, such as a fire incident that occurred in the Mont Blanc tunnel or an event occurred in a hotel in Taiwan. This work also addresses fire modelling by the software Fire Dynamics Simulator, in such a way that the hypotheses formulated during the sampling process are tested by the computational structural analysis of the incident. This thesis also aims at providing investigators with an innovative software package for conducting fire investigations, in an effort to produce a Unique Investigative Protocol. This tool will standardize the procedures at the core of the Structural Fire Investigation, so that parameters, other than just the point of origin of the fire are scrutinized. As such, Fire Investigation becomes a self-contained subject under the wider umbrella of structural engineering, and a forensic procedure just as important as those typically undertaken when fire-damaged buildings are involved. Finally the Structural Investigations that are constantly occurring at the core of Reverse Engineering might lead to the establishment of new frontiers, both from a structural optimization and fire reliability standpoint.