A992 & A500 Hardness Values / Fire

[Bike0242]

Hello,

I am evaluating some A992 and A500 structural steel that was in a fire. I am wanting to use hardness as an indicator of whether it suffered any damage, a method that was identified in a "Structure" magazine article. I will also be examining it for excessive deflections, etc. but am not proposing any destructive testing.

I examined the ASTM spec document for A992 and didn't see hardness as one of the specified properties; can anyone lend a hand as to what undamaged structural steel should come in at in terms of hardness? Is there an applicable standard document?

Thanks!

 

[EdStainless]

Find unaffected locations and test those are reference.
There will be a better chance that they are from the same batch of steel and should have similar chemistry.
You really need to plan on taking samples for mechanical testing (to get the truth) and to examine microstructure.
After all it is possible to get the same hardness but to have very low ductility.

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P.E. Metallurgy, consulting work welcomed

 

[JStephen]

Can you check pieces that were involved in the fire and compare to other pieces more removed from the fire? Or possibly different locations on the same beam that had different fire exposure?

 

[lexpatrie]

You might find something useful here, or it will give you plenty of other articles to trace through:

Eslami, Mohammadreza & Mosalam, Khalid & Agrawal, Ankit & Kasalanati, Amarnath & Marjanishvili, Shalva & Kodur, Venkatesh. (2022). Forensic Investigation of Fire-Induced Collapse of a Steel Building. 312-329. 10.1061/9780784484180.027.

There's also Fisher, Evaluation of Steel after a fire.

Tide, Raymond H.R. (1998). "Integrity of Structural Steel After Exposure to Fire," Engineering Journal, American Institute of Steel Construction, Vol. 35, pp. 26-38. (Currently free to download for all.)

Regards,
Brian