The Authors

Jean-Marc Franssen is a Research Director in the National Fund for Scientific Research Belgium , at the University of Liege in Belgium from where he graduated in 1982.

He has specialised his research career on the behaviour of structures subjected to fire which was the subject of his Ph.D. thesis (Franssen, 1987), and his "thèse d’agrégation de l’enseignement supérieur" (Franssen, 1997). During the last 20 years, he has been involved in numerous research programs on the fire behaviour of steel and composite steel-concrete structures, a lot of them with the support of the ECSC "European Coal and Steel Community". The steel industry, namely the Luxemburg company ARBED, now in the ARCELOR group, played a prominent role in several of these projects, with CTICM from France, TNO from the Nederland and LABEIN from Spain as regular partners. At the University of Liege , he is a major contributor to lectures on structural fire design. He was a member of the Project Team for transforming the fire section of Eurocode 3 from an ENV to an EN, he played a key role in writing the Belgium National Application Documents to the fire parts of the Eurocodes on steel, concrete and composite structures, and is an active member of two Technical Group chaired within RILEM, "Réunion International des Laboratoires d’Essais sur les Matériaux", namely "TC 129-MHT: Test Methods for Mechanical Properties of Concrete at High Temperatures" and " TC HTC Mechanical Concrete Properties at High Temperature - Modelling and Applications ". He initiated the international "Structures in Fire" workshops held in Copenhagen in 2000, Christchurch in 2002 and Ottawa in 2004. Having been involved in the "Natural Fire Safety Concept" series of research projects, his expertise goes beyond structural behaviour to include modelling of fire growth and severity. He has acted as the Belgian National Technical Contact for the section of Eurocode 1 on fire actions.

Curriculum Vitae

Raul Zaharia graduated from the Technical University of Timisoara in Romania in 1993 and conducted his Ph.D. research in the field of steel structures.

He is presently a lecturer in the Department of Steel Structures and Structural Mechanics at the University of Timisoara . In 2000, he was awarded a one year postdoctoral grant by the Services of the Prime Minister of Belgium for Scientific, Technical and Cultural Affairs, for research work at the University of Liege in the field of structural fire design. During this period, he studied the behaviour of high-rise steel rack structures in fire. Other international experience has included research at CTICM France, ELSA Laboratory in Ispra , Italy and City University of London for a total of three years. His research in the field of steel structures and fire design has led to more than 50 scientific papers and research reports. He is also involved in many design projects of steel structures within the design office BRITT in Romania .

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