Objectives  The performance analysis of ship cabin steel structures in fire situations is fundamental to structural fire resistance design. Compared with research conducted under traditional standard fire conditions, research based on the real fire temperature field can more accurately analyze the mechanical response behavior of cabin structures. Aiming at an open cabin (i.e. engine room) structure, a fire-heat-structure coupling method combining FDS and ANSYS is developed.

  Methods  First, the FDS simulation is utilized to obtain the temperature information of the inside ship wall exposed to the fire, which is then used as the boundary condition transferred to the structural finite element analysis software ANSYS. Transient thermal analysis concerning the temperature field of the cabin structure is then conducted, and the thermal-structural coupling analysis of the ship cabin structure carried out in a real fire scenario.

  Results  The results of the case study using the proposed method demonstrate that the stress distribution is not uniform due to the uneven temperature distribution. The maximum stress is concentrated at the edge of the cabin, with a value of 19 MPa. The structure does not reach the failure limit after being exposed to fire.

  Conclusions  Compared with the traditional standard fire curve method, the proposed method has two advantages for addressing structural response: the non-uniform elevated temperature of the structure and real fire temperature rise. More attention should be paid to the change in structural internal force caused by non-uniform temperature rise in an open ship cabin.