Timber is combustible material.Study on the fire performance of timber members is of great significance.Due to the lack of the systematic study on the fire performance of timber structures

current codes

Code for fire protection design of buildings（GB 50016-2014）and Code for design of timber structures（GB 50005-2003）（2005version）in our country are based on the tests

only the required fire rate of each type of timber members is stated in these code and the calculation methods to determine the fire rate of these members are missing.This paper introduces the calculation methods for fire rate of timber beams in Eurocode

American code

Australia code and Canadian code.It was found from the comparison between these codes that all these methods are based on residual cross-section method

but the ways to calculate the charring rate and the effect of corner roundings and thermal influence zone are different.Comparisons between the predicted fire rate from these codes and test reults show that the calculation methods for fire rate of timber beams based on residual cross-section method are able to predict the fire rate of timber beams with high accuracy

and the predictions of Eurocode and Australian code which include the effect of density of wood species are closer to test results.Thefore

the calculation methods based on residual cross-section method considering the effect of density of wood species was recommended to employ in Chinese code.