Prediction of the Most Fire-Sensitive Point in Building Structures with Differentiable Agents for Thermal Simulators

Fire safety is a critical area of research in civil and mechanical engineering, particularly in ensuring the structural stability of buildings during fire events. The Most Fire-Sensitive Point (MFSP) in a structure is the location where a fire would cause the greatest impact on structural stability. Accurate prediction of the MFSP is vital for streamlining structural assessments and optimizing the design process. This paper presents a novel framework for MFSP prediction using a neural network-based approach that integrates fire dynamics and finite element analysis through a differentiable agent model. The framework focuses on predicting the Maximum Interstory Drift Ratio (MIDR), a key indicator of structural performance under fire conditions. By leveraging the differentiable agent model, we efficiently generate labeled data for MFSP and directly train a predictor for this critical metric. To achieve this, we generated extensive simulation data encompassing structural and fire scenarios and employed graph neural networks to represent the building structures. Transfer learning was applied to optimize the training process, and an edge update mechanism was introduced to dynamically adjust edge attributes, reflecting property changes under fire conditions. The proposed model was rigorously evaluated on simulation data, demonstrating strong performance in accurately predicting both MIDR and MFSP, thus advancing fire safety analysis for building structures.