The mechanical material behavior of mild steels is reversible in the cooling phase of natural fires, which is proven by experimental evidence. For the material behavior of high-strength steels during cooling, no results are yet available. The paper provides the first comprehensive test program on the constitutive material behavior of high-strength steels S690QL and S960QL as well as mild steel S355 J2 + N in the case of natural fires. It is elaborated that the mechanical material behavior of high-strength steels in the cooling phase differs from the behavior in the heating phase and is not reversible due to phase changes of the microstructure. A constitutive material model for structural fire design purposes is developed on the basis of experimental data and the soundness and reliability of the model are proven by a statistical study that systematically evaluates the deviation of the model prediction from the test data.

Using bolts as shear connectors of the steel-concrete composite beams enables prefabricated assembly and makes it possible to demountable and reuse the prefabricated components. However, studies on the fire resistance of prefabricated demountable composite beams (PDCBs) connected by bolts are limited. In this paper, four full-scale fire resistance tests were conducted to investigate the fire resistance of PDCBs connected by shear bolts with profiled sheet ribs parallel to the steel beam. Test phenomena, heating curves, deformation curves, and critical temperatures of specimens were obtained through fire-resistant tests. Test results show that the shear failure of bolted connectors occurred in the partially connected PDCBs instead of in the fully connected ones. Under the same load ratio, the fire resistance limit of PDCBs with fire protection was 4.4 times that of PDCBs without fire protection. The temperatures of the upper flanges of the steel beams in the PDCBs were overestimated by the existing codes. Moreover, numerical heat transfer analysis was carried out to investigate the effect of steel beam upper flange dimensions and concrete slab thickness on the temperature distribution of the steel beam upper flange. Finally, formulas were proposed for calculating the temperature distribution of the steel beam upper flange, which agrees well with the FEM simulated values.