Discussion on a systematic approach to validation of software for structures in fire

A validation exercise has been performed for the thermo-mechanical software SAFIR® based on a dual approach. First, the examples proposed in the German National Annex of EN 1992-1-2 have been calculated with SAFIR and, second, the references to SAFIR found in scientific publications have been analysed with respect to the level of accuracy estimated by the authors for the results of SAFIR. The aim of this paper is not to present the detailed results of this validation exercise (which are published in open access reports). The focus is more on a critical analysis of the examples presented in the German National Annex which indeed paved the way to a systematic approach to validation of SiF software but could be improved, namely by including sensitivity analyses on the discretisation, a better description of some input data particularly in the material models, a presentation of the means used to obtain some reference results and a clear definition of the failure criteria to be used for determining fire resistance times. Furthermore, extensive analysis of the literature showed that the wide field of application of a typical SiF software requires an extension of the domain covered by the standard on concrete structures.