This paper presents two full-scale fire resistance tests of sandwich panels with connections, to verify one way coupled fire-structure simulations. The heat transfer simulations agree well with the tests, however, the structural response simulations show some differences compared to the start of the first test, which is a sandwich panel façade. A parameter study is conducted to resolve these differences. It is shown that of little influence are the modelling of the fire, the description of the steel's thermal expansion, the modelling of the tongue and groove connections, and variations of the connection stiffness. Differently, glue decomposition, resulting in delamination, and related sandwich face instabilities are likely to be the cause of the differences. In the second test, a so-called stud bolts test, connection failures by vertical bearing were reported, but further mechanical measurements were not carried out. To simulate the connection failures, in the simulations additionally a two-scale model is incorporated for the connections. This model shows that horizontal bearing occurs in a direction perpendicular to the load due to lateral expansion of the system. As a conclusion, state-of-the-art fire-structure simulations can simulate full-scale fire tests of sandwich panels, however, panel delamination and stability should be modelled in detail. Furthermore, tests should always include detailed measurements with respect to the mechanical behaviour, e.g. with respect to panel buckling, delamination, and connection failures
Xu et al. (Sat,) studied this question.