Recent events have repeatedly reminded the engineering community that our transportation infrastructure is susceptible to fire from crashed or overturned vehicles, especially from trucks carrying flammable cargo. Despite these hazards, most bridges in the U.S. are designed and maintained with little, if any, consideration for fire resistance. With approximately 600,000 bridges currently in use in the U.S., fire has caused bridge failures at a rate consistent with other hazards to which engineers dedicate significant amounts of time and money to mitigate. …
Author Archives : Spencer Quiel, Ph.D.
Spencer E. Quiel is the P.C. Rossin Assistant Professor of Structural Engineering at Lehigh University. Professor Quiel is a past member of the ASCE Fire Protection Committee (2008-17) and is the current vice chair of the PCI Blast Resistance and Structural Integrity Committee. He can be reached at squiel@lehigh.edu.
UFC 4-010-01, DoD Minimum Antiterrorism Standards for Buildings, dated February 2012, outlines 21 standards that govern site planning and the design of structural, architectural, electrical and mechanical systems for Low and Very Low Levels of Protection. The current document was developed as an update to a previous version originally issued in October 2003 and modified by Change 1, in January 2007. Though some of the revisions were incremental and provided additional clarification to existing standards, others were significant and represent a major change in approach. Implementation of the updated criteria is likely to result in levels of hardening or analysis that vary from those required by earlier editions. …