Search results

The British Building Regulations allow the application of performance based design methods to ensure the fire resistance of buildings. This has led to significant amounts of research and testing on the fire performance of structures. This research generated the understanding that steel framed buildings have an inherent fire resistance, which has in turn resulted in the development of specialist numerical calculation tools as well as simplified design methods for the fire design of steel-framed structures. The paper describes the practical application of these structural fire engineering methods using a large retail and cinema complex in the UK as a case study. The finite element software Vulcan has been used to analyse the behaviour of large parts of this multi-storey building during a number of likely design fire scenarios in order to optimise the amount of applied passive fire protection to the structure. The building is constructed as a steel composite structure with normal down-stand composite beams supporting a composite floor on trapezoidal metal deck. This type of structure is ideal to utilise the benefits of tensile membrane action during a fire which can be used to omit fire protection from off grid secondary beams. Due to the size and the multiple usage and changing floor construction of the buildings five different sub-frames haven been analysed. In the UK a number of simplified methods are currently applied to justify partially protected steel structures. These methods are based on individual bays only and therefore do not consider the effects of the surrounding structure. In order to investigate the differences further, the behaviour of the large sub-frame models has been compared with the results of individual bay analysis methods.

Over the past decade, many studies have investigated peer support between neurotypical and neurodivergent children. Less is known about how autistic children support each other in educational contexts, especially in basic education, where child-adult interactions are still predominant. This study aims to investigate whether and how autistic children supported each other in small-group discussions in the first years of basic education. This paper focused on unraveling the communication structures of these supportive events, aiming to understand further how autistic children make sense of social interactions and intersubjective processes that require peer support.

Building on conversation analysis methods, this paper analyzed the transcripts of the small-group discussions, identifying and analyzing the construction of support in children’s dialogues. Nine Finnish children (7–10 years old) attending mainstream school in Finland under intensified support in part-time special classrooms participated in this study. The study adopted a specific method called Idea Diary to frame the small-group discussions. The teacher guided the conversations, providing a dynamic structure for children’s interactions, but students were encouraged to interact among themselves. This paper recorded 11 sessions within the six-month implementation of the Idea Diary, totaling 240 min of data.

Results show that the children recognized situations where other children needed support in interactions and intervened in ways that promoted the continuation of the conversation and the clarification of ideas. Autistic children were sensitive to peers’ unspoken needs, capable of identifying subtle nuances of conversation dynamics and able to express support through comments and questions during the small-group discussions.

This study provides insights into the understudied phenomenon of peer support among autistic children in small-group discussions. It contributes to the growing corpus of research dedicated to exploring and revealing social competencies among autistic people. It discusses implications for developing educational practices that foster social interactions respecting the quality of autistic interactions and the interests of autistic students.