Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 28 (2004) 347354

www.elsevier.com/locate/etfs

Experimental and analytical technique for estimating

interface thermal conductance in composite structural elements
under simulated re conditions
Jamil Ghojel

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Monash University, Cauleld Campus, 900 Dandenong Road, Cauleld, East Victoria,
3145 Melbourne, Australia
Received 16 December 2002; accepted 26 June 2003

Abstract
Composite structural elements in the form of steel tubes lled with concrete are being increasingly used in buildings for their dual
advantage of increased load bearing capacity and re resistance. Models to predict the response of composite structures under re
conditions have been developed with varying degrees of accuracy. One of the major drawbacks for these models is ignoring the eect
of thermal contact resistance at the steelconcrete interfacial. The reason for this oversight is due mainly to the absence of data in the
literature quantifying this parameter. This paper summarizes an experimental and analytical investigation of the interfacial thermal
contact conductance of an unloaded circular steel tube lled with non-reinforced normal concrete and exposed to high heat uxes.
Inverse heat conduction analysis and experimental measurements are used to estimate the thermal contact conductance as a function
of steel temperature. Sensitivity analysis of the eect of the magnitude of the contact conductance on the temperature response of the
composite element using direct heat conduction modelling is also presented.

2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Contact conductance; Interface; Inverse heat transfer; Structural elements; Fire

1. Introduction
Composite structural elements comprising steel tubes
of dierent shapes lled with concrete are widely used in
the construction because they combine the advantages
of structural steel and concrete. Compared with traditional forms of column construction, their use can also
lead to 60% savings in total column cost in tall buildings
[1]. Filling hollow steel elements with concrete results in
increased load-carrying capacity and re resistance. The
improvement in re resistance is accomplished without
resorting to additional re protection measures such as
adding external special insulating materials. Depending
on the composition of the concrete lling re resistance
could be 12 h for plain concrete, 23 h for steelbre
reinforced concrete or greater than 3 h for steel barreinforced concrete [2]. Unprotected hollow steel column
without any lling, on the other hand, has a re resis*

Tel.: +61-3-9903-2490; fax: +61-3-9903-2766.

E-mail address: jamil.ghojel@eng.monash.edu.au (J. Ghojel).

0894-1777/$ - see front matter
2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0894-1777(03)00113-4

tance of 0.20.3 h [2]. Existing mathematical models for

the prediction of the temperature response of composite
structural columns [3,4], which are designed to reduce the
high cost of actual testing, do not normally take into
account the resistance to heat ow at the steelconcrete
interface. This could be the main reason, as indicated by
the results of this investigations shown below in the
discussions, for the resulting signicant disagreement
between measured and predicted temperatures in cases
investigated in the last two references. This resistance to
heat ow is known as contact resistance and is usually
expressed in terms of a joint contact conductance hj ,
dened in terms of Newtons law of cooling
q hj DT

Contact resistance occurs because solid materials are

in contact in relatively few places and the voids can
contain a uid (water or steam in steelconcrete composite columns) with signicantly lower thermal conductivity than the solids. One of the better known
models available for the prediction of thermal joint

348

J. Ghojel / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 28 (2004) 347354

Nomenclature
hc
hg
hj

Contact thermal conductance, W/m2 K

Gap thermal conductance, W/m2 K
Joint thermal conductance, W/m2 K

q
T
DT

Heat ux, W/m2

Temperature, C
Temperature drop across the interface, C or K

face is made up of very rough non-conforming surfaces

(Fig. 1) for which there are no mathematical models as
yet that can calculate the thermal joint conductance (hj ).

2. Inverse heat conduction problem (IHCP) analysis

2.1. Experimental setup

Fig. 1. Steelconcrete interface in an unloaded circular element at

600 C.

conductance (hj ) is the model proposed by Yovnovitch

[5] for two rough conforming surfaces:
hj hc hg

The contact conductance hc in Eq. (2) is a function of

the harmonic mean thermal conductivity of the interface, the eective mean absolute asperity slope of the
interface, the eective RMS surface roughness of the
contacting asperities, the contact pressure and the surface microhardness of the softer of the two solids in
contact. The gap conductance hg is a function of the
thermal conductivity of the gap substance, the eective
gap thickness and a gas parameter accounting for rarefaction eects at high temperatures and low gas pressures. This model has been used successfully to calculate
the thermal joint conductance at interfaces formed by
metals and mold compounds [6] and aluminium
ceramic interfaces in microelectronic applications [7].
These applications involve bare conforming surfaces
under moderate pressures and temperatures. In the case
of construction steel and concrete in contact the inter-

The experimental setup is shown schematically in Fig.

2. A circular steel tube (outside diameter 140 mm, steel
tube thickness 6 mm, tube length 420 mm) lled with
normal concrete was used as the experimental specimen
which was prepared and allowed to dry for 28 days. The
steel component of the specimen was galvanized structural hollow section steel having yield strength of 350
MPa and carbon content of 0.2%. The concrete used
was a normal (non-reinforced) concrete having the following composition: 33 kg cement, 10 kg water, 31 kg
sand, 80 kg aggregate and 0.5 l super plasticiser. Holes
were drilled axially in the concrete to a plane in the
middle of the tube to accommodate ve K-type grounded junction thermocouples in steel protective sheathes
of 3 mm diameter and 300 mm length. Special K-type
bolt-on high temperature, inconel overbraided, ceramic
bre insulated thermocouples supplied by Omega Engineering (USA) were used to measure the temperatures
of the surface of the tube at four locations (nodes 228,
156, 84 and 12 in Fig. 3). The tube was heated in a
modied 15 kW electric furnace with three heating elements located on the top and two sides. The location of
(and unequal power dissipation by) the elements caused
uneven heating of the specimen necessitating the treatment of the problem as a two-dimensional heat conduction problem. The specimen was heated from the
ambient temperature until a maximum bulk furnace

Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of the experimental setup.

J. Ghojel / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 28 (2004) 347354

349

tions, and the time history temperature data. The postprocessing program allows the user to graphically view
the computed uxtime histories, nodal temperature
histories and a comparison of measured and computed
temperatures. The input data consists of:
A two-dimensional nite element mesh representing
the cross section of the modelled object in the form
of nodes and elements.
Known (measured) temperaturetime histories at any
number of nodal locations in the nite element mesh.
Thermal (specic heat and conductivity) and physical
(density) properties of the material(s) making up the
model, which can vary with temperature, be orthotropic or vary for each element [12].

Fig. 3. Finite element mesh for two-dimensional model with contact

resistance.

temperature of 900 C (measured by a thermocouple

mounted in the rear of the furnace) was reached then
cooled down for 15 min to allow the heat ux to peak
before data acquisition was terminated. The temperature measurements were recorded at 2-s intervals using a
Datataker 500 and its dedicated software DeLogger Plus
(both by Data Electronics, Rowville, Victoria, Australia). Both ends of the tube were insulated to simulate the
two-dimensional heat transfer as closely as possible by
packing steel caps with Carbolane insulating material
having low thermal conductivity (ranging from 0.01 to
0.2 W/m C for the temperature range 01000 C), low
heat storage capacity and good resistance to thermal
shock.
Temperature-variable thermal properties (thermal
conductivity and specic heat) for steel and concrete
used in this investigation were as per European Standards ENV 1993-1-2 and ENV 1994-1-1 [8] and are
given in the Appendix A. These properties correlate well
with those given by Lie and coworkers [3,9] and using
one or the other had no noticeable eect on the results.
2.2. Inverse modelling
INTEMP (TRUCOMP CO, Fountain Valley, CA,
USA) was used for the inverse heat transfer modelling
and analysis. INTEMP is a software that uses dynamic
programming and the CrankNicolson or the fully implicit (backward dierence) formula to solve linear and
non-linear inverse heat conduction problems [10,11].
INTEMP comes with a pre-processing graphical program which allows the user to graphically check the
nite element model, the ux and thermocouple loca-

INTEMP solves for the unknown heat uxes (at the

specied locations) that minimize the least square error
with an added regularization term based on Tikhonovs
method [10]. The time step in the program must agree
with sampling increment of the temperature measurements, which was 2 s throughout this investigation. The
symmetric conductance matrix containing the mathematical representation of the spatial variables is assembled
from discrete nite elements. The basic two-dimensional
nite element is the triangular element with linear variation. The quadrilateral element is composed of four
triangular elements with the center node eliminated.
Both the CrankNicolson and backward dierence formulas for the heat conduction model are solved with
successive approximation of linear problems using a
non-linear correction term, which is evaluated during
each iteration using the previous temperature histories
that are stored.
Because of the sensitivity of the inverse problem to
noise in the input data, INTEMP oers an option to
smooth the data with a third-order lter. Another option allows the user to impose a rst-order regularization on the unknown heat uxes using the rst derivative
of the heat uxes for regularization. The optimum
smoothing parameter is determined (a) by varying the
parameter until a good balance is achieved between
matching the data and producing smooth ux histories,
or (b) using L-curve analysis based on a plot of the mean
square error versus the norm of estimated heat uxes at
dierent smoothing parameter values with the optimum
value just to the right of the knee in this curve [10].
INTEMP is a general inverse heat conduction software and cannot solve for the contact conductance
directly. Additionally, we could not nd any data indicating the expected magnitudes of the conductance at
steelconcrete interfaces. Therefore, the analysis was
carried out in two separate steps:
1. Initial heat uxes as a function of time were obtained
over the four equal quadrants of the circular column

3. Results
To solve for the interfacial conductance, the interface
was represented in the nite element model as an additional material of small thickness with thermal conductivity in the radial direction only and no heat
capacity. The thickness of the interfacial elements has
little bearing on the solution but it must not have a value
of zero and it is recommended that the thickness be
selected so that the layer is physically just visible in the
nite element model. INTEMP was then used to solve
for the heat uxes in the usual manner, but the nal
value of the interfacial conductance was arrived at by
manually varying the conductance and inspecting the
data for balance between matching temperature data
and smooth heat ux histories. Fig. 4 shows the
smoothed heat uxes acting on three quadrants: qtop ,
qleft and qright . The ux on the bottom quadrant was
ignored because no temperature readings were taken
on the concrete side of the bottom interface.
The contact conductances, which produced the
overall best results from this process are shown in Fig. 5
as a function of steel surface temperature. These curves,

16000
Top

12000

Right

8000
4000
0

Left
0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

Time, s
Fig. 4. Smoothed heat uxtime histories at three locations estimated
by INTEMP.

representing the conductance across the interface for the

three said quadrants, show strong space- and temperature-variation of the contact conductance in the circular
specimen tested. The average contact conductance is
also shown in Fig. 5.
The conductancetemperature relations follow the
same trend for all quadrants. Moisture in the concrete
was observed to migrate toward the interface as the
temperature of the specimen was increased. This moisture then evaporated quickly with further increase in
temperature until it disappeared. This could explain the
initial high value of conductance hj (low contact resistance) corresponding to a small interfacial gap probably
lled with water at low temperature. Assuming the
contact conductance hc in Eq. (1) remains unchanged
with steel temperature, the gap conductance hg , which is
mainly a function of the thermal conductivity of the gap
substance and the eective gap thickness, becomes the
determining component. It can be hypothesized that as
the temperature increases the gap at the interface increases as a result of expansion of the steel tube and
shrinkage of the concrete as it dehydrates. The increase
in temperature will also cause the water in the gap to
evaporate forming steam which has a much lower
thermal conductivity than water. As a result the joint
conductance hj falls sharply initially tapering o to its
minimum value (maximum contact resistance) at temperatures above 200 C. The reason for the small change

3000
2500

Contact Conductance,
oC

by coupling the temperature measurements with a

heat transfer numerical model without contact conductance (comprising 240 elements) and minimizing
the dierences between the calculated and measured
temperatures at given locations. These heat uxes
and the measured temperatures across the interface
were then used to obtain initial estimates of the contact conductance as a function of steel temperature.
2. The numerical heat transfer model was then changed
to include a representation of contact resistance in the
form of a 0.1 in (2.45 mm) thick ring of elements between the steel and concrete (dark elemental ring in
Fig. 3). The nite element mesh for the two-dimensional model comprising 264 elements consisted of
six material groups: the steel tube, concrete core
and four quadrants representing the interface ring.
The thermal conductivity in the radial direction represented the contact resistance to heat ow across
the interface. The thermal conductivity in the tangential direction, the heat capacity and density of the interfacial ring were all ignored. INTEMP was then run
repeatedly starting from the initial values of hj estimated in step 1. For each run, INTEMP solved for
the unknown heat ux densities which minimized
the general least square dierence between each measurement and the corresponding estimated temperature at each thermocouple location. The values of hj
were varied manually until agreement between the
measured and calculated temperatures at the nine
thermocouple locations were deemed satisfactory as
explained below.

Heat Flux, W/m2

J. Ghojel / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 28 (2004) 347354

W/m2

350

2000
1500
1000
500
0
0

200

400

600

800

Steel Temperature, oC
Top

Right

Left

Bottom

Average

Fig. 5. Rened contact conductance versus temperature.

J. Ghojel / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 28 (2004) 347354

hj a
b exp
cT d W=m2 K

Temperature, oC

where, a 1926, b 765:8, c 339:9, d
1:4 and T

is in degrees Celsius.
Comparisons of measured and computed temperatures at the locations indicated by the node numbers in
Fig. 3 for the heat transfer model with contact conductance are shown in Figs. 6 and 7. The numerical
values of the contact conductance as a function of steel
temperature used for the model in INTEMP are those
shown in Fig. 5. Fig. 6 shows temperaturetime histories
for three surface steel nodes (228, 84 and 12), and Fig. 6
for three nodes in the concrete core (222, 114 and 9).
Figs. 6 and 7 show good correlation between the measured temperaturetime histories and those calculated

700
node 12

600
500
400

228

300
84

200
100
0
0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

Time, s
Fig. 6. Comparison of measured (markers) and calculated (lines)
temperatures for surface nodes (steel).

600

Temperature, oC

in hj thereafter could be due to two opposing inuences

on the conductance. These are the increase in gap size
with increasing temperature (reduced conductance) and
increase in thermal conductivity of superheated steam
with temperature (increased conductance). The overall
result of these two factors could explain the small
change in hj with further increase in steel temperature.
The dierences in the values of hj between the locations could be due to diering interfacial geometries and
gap sizes caused by uneven aggregate composition and
heating of the specimen. The computed contact conductance ranges from 500 to 2700 W/m2 K for the steel
casing temperature range of 25700 C. The rened
contact conductance proles presented in Fig. 5 do not
represent the optimal solution for this problem. Still
further improvement in the agreement between measured and calculated temperatures can be achieved by
further renement of hj . However, the improvements
seem to be marginal and do not warrant the extra time
and eort needed for the iterative process.
Until an accurate phenomenological model is developed for the extremely complex interfacial gap formed
between steel and concrete, the following correlation for
hj (representing the average curve in Fig. 5) as a function
of steel temperature is proposed for unloaded circular
composite columns in the steel temperature range 25
700 C:

351

node 9

500
400
222

300
200

114

100
0
0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

Time, s
Fig. 7. Comparison of measured (markers) and calculated (lines)
temperatures for core nodes (concrete).

by INTEMP at most node locations for the model with

interface. The worst correlation was consistently obtained at the core nodes closest to the center (nodes 114
and 222).

4. Sensitivity analysis
The estimated contact conductance at the steelconcrete interface of the tested circular specimen was based
on the assumption that the thermal resistance at the
interface can be represented by a thin layer comprising
elemental bricks of 2.54 mm thick (0.1 in.) which make
no contribution to the thermal capacity of the model
and have thermal conductivity in the radial direction
only. The thermal conductivity was obtained by multiplying the thermal conductance with the interfacial elemental thickness. The average thermal conductivity of
the interface thus estimated was found to be approximately equal to one tenth of the thermal conductivity of
steel and twice the thermal conductivity of concrete.
Direct heat conduction modelling of this multi-layer
cylindrical system yielded some interesting results. The
thermal analysis software SINDA/G incorporating the
graphical pre- and post-processor SINDA/3D (Network
Analysis Inc., Tempe, Arizona) was used in the modelling with the top ux shown in Fig. 4 uniformly applied
on the entire surface of the steel casing. The model was
exactly the same as the one shown in Fig. 3 with the
contact conductance changing relative to the averaged
joint conductance hj given by Eq. (3). Figs. 8 and 9 show
the temperaturetime histories at a surface node and at
the centre core node for the model without interface,
with contact conductance equal to the averaged estimated values (Eq. (3)) and with contact conductance
equal to one tenth and one hundredth of the latter. Fig.
10 shows the eect of hj on the surface and core temperatures after 5400 s in the simulation. These gures
show that the presence or otherwise of the estimated
joint contact conductance has little inuence on the
predicted temperatures, both on the surface and in the
concrete core, for the boundary conditions assumed

352

J. Ghojel / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 28 (2004) 347354

Surface Temperature

1600

0.01hj

1200

0.1hj

1000
800
600
400
200

hj
1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

600

Fig. 8. Eect of interfacial conductance on the predicted surface

temperature by SINDA/G.

600
500

hj
0.1hj

no interface

300
200

0.01hj

100
0
1000

2000

3000

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

Relative Conductance,h x /h j

Time, s

Temperature, oC

800

200
0

1000

400

no interface

400

Core Temperature

1200

Temperature,oC

Temperature,oC

1400

4000

5000

6000

Time, s

Fig. 9. Eect of interfacial conductance on the predicted concrete core

temperature by SINDA/G.

(uniform ux, uniform interfacial conductance). However, decreasing hj (increasing thermal contact resistance
at the interface) can have signicant eect on the predicted temperatures. If the magnitude of the joint contact conductance is below 0.1 hj , the predicted surface

Fig. 10. Surface and core temperatures as a function of relative conductance.

temperature could be signicantly underestimated and

the core temperature overestimated.
Published data clearly show that under standard re
conditions the predicted steel temperatures, using
models that do not incorporate contact conductance, are
consistently underestimated [3,4]. Fig. 11a and b,
adapted from these references, show comparison of
predicted and measured surface and core temperatures
of circular and rectangular columns. These data seem to
indicate that contact conductance will have a signicant
eect on thermal response of structural elements under
high temperature conditions, particularly on the surface.
The core temperaturetime histories are more dicult
to attribute to the contact conductance because of the
complicating inuence of moisture content and mass
transfer and presence of steel reinforcement bars in the
concrete lling.
Even so, it can be noticed that the predicted temperatures lie above the measured temperature over most
of the test period which correlate with the results of the
sensitivity analysis. The reason for the absence of the

Fig. 11. Temperaturetime histories at surface and core locations [3,4]: (a) circular column 273 mm diameter, 6.35 mm steel tube thickness, (b) square
column 254 mm 254 mm, 6.35 mm steel tube thickness.

J. Ghojel / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 28 (2004) 347354

characteristic plateau in our measured temperaturetime

histories of concrete at temperatures close to 100 C is
due to the rapid migration of moisture from the concrete
to the steelconcrete interface and evaporation during
the early stages of the experiment.
Parallel investigation of the contact conductance in a
square composite element conducted under similar test
conditions yielded contact conductances ten times
smaller than the conductances for the circular specimen.
This indicates that the geometry of the column section
plays an important role. There is also reason to believe
that contact conductance in loaded composite structures
may even be smaller as a result of concrete spalling,
column axial deformation caused by the load, thermal
expansion, creep and bending. Axial deformation can
cause the gap at the steelconcrete gap to increase
thereby decreasing the gap conductance component in
Eq. (2). Fig. 10 shows that when the interfacial conductance is decreased (resistance increased) the temperature of the surface increases. So, if we assume that
the discrepancy between the calculated and measured
values in Fig. 11a (average value of 78 C) is due to
ignoring the eect of interfacial conductance in the
calculations for Fig. 11a, a decrease of hx =hj from 1 to
0.08 (12 times decrease from the base value hj of the
conductance) will eliminate the discrepancy.
The following correlation for thermal conductance
across the steelconcrete interface is proposed for loaded circular steel tubes lled with plain or bar-reinforced
concrete for steel temperature range 25700 C. The
constants al and bl are obtained by dividing the constants a and b in correlation (3) by 12.
hj al
bl exp
cT d W=m2 K

where, al 160:5, bl 63:8, c 339:9, d
1:4 and T

is the temperature in degrees Celsius.

5. Conclusions
1. In the absence of a mathematical model capable of
accurately predicting contact conductance at steel
concrete interfaces that are extremely complex to
model, inverse heat conduction analysis seems to be
a good alternative for estimating hj as a function of
the temperature of the steel tube.
2. Data collected using this technique can be used in engineering calculations of the temperature response of
composite structural elements exposed to res and
could serve as a basis for verication of future mathematical models of thermal conductance at steelconcrete interfaces.
3. Neglecting the presence of thermal contact conductance at the steelconcrete interface can lead to large
dierences between computed and measured temperatures in columns under re conditions. These dier-

353

ences could be the reason behind reported dierences

of up to 20% between measured and calculated re
resistance.
4. More work is required to verify the method used,
particularly for the case of loaded columns.
5. Incorporation of the proposed correlation for contact
conductance in Eq. (4) in the existing models developed by researchers in the composite structural
elements eld could be the best way to test the
claimed eects of contact resistance in this work.
Appendix A. Material properties
1. Steel
Density
q 7830 kg/m3
Specic heat (ENV 1993-1-2)
cps 425 7:73  10
1 T
1:69  10
3 T 2
2:22  10
6 T 3 J/kg C
20 C 6 T 6 600 C
002
cps 666
T13
738
J/kg C 601 C 6 T 6 735 C
17820
cps 545 T
731 J/kg C 736 C 6 T 6 900 C
cps 650 J/kg C 901 C 6 T 6 1200 C
Thermal conductivity (ENV 1993-1-21)
ks 54
3:33  10
2 T W/m C T 6 800 C
ks 27:3 W/m C T P 801 C
2. Concrete
Density
q 2349 kg/m3
Specic heat (ENV

1994-1-2)


T
T 2

4 120
cpc 900 80 120
J/kg C
0 C 6 T 6 1000 C
Thermal conductivity

(ENV 1994-1-2)


T
T 2
kc 2:0
0:24 120
W/m C
0:012 120
0 C 6 T 6 1000 C

References
[1] B. Uy, Behaviour and design of thin-walled concrete-lled steel
box columns, Australian Civil/Structural Engineering Transactions CE39 (1) (1996) 3138.
[2] T.T. Lie, M. Chabot, Concrete lling: Fire protection for steel
columns, Canadian Consulting Engineer (May/June) (1990) 39
40.
[3] T.T. Lie, Fire resistance of circular steel columns lled with barreinforced concrete, Journal of Structural Engineering 120 (5)
(1994).
[4] T.T. Lie, R.J. Irwin, Fire resistance of rectangular steel columns
lled with bar-reinforced concrete, Journal of Structural Engineering 121 (5) (1995).
[5] M.M. Yovanovich, New Contact and Gap Correlations for
Conforming Rough Surfaces, AIAA-81-1164, Presented at AIAA
16th Thermophysics Conference, Palo Alto, CA, June 1981.

354

J. Ghojel / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 28 (2004) 347354

[6] G.P. Peterson, L.S. Fletcher, Evaluation of the thermal contact

conductance between substrate and mold compound materials, in:
M. Imber, G.P. Teterson, M.M. Yovanovitch (Eds.), Fundamentals of Conduction and Recent Developments in Contact Resistance, ASME HTD, Vol. 69, 1987, pp. 99105.
[7] M.M. Yovanovitch, J.R. Culham, P. Teerstra, Calculating interface resistance, http://www.electronics-cooling.com/Resources/
EC_Articles/May97/article3.htm.
[8] J.A. Purkiss, Fire Safety Engineering Design of Structures,
Butterworth Heinemann, 1996.

[9] T.T. Lie, B. Celikkol, Method to calculate the re resistance of

circular reinforced concrete columns, ACI Materials Journal 88
(1) (1991).
[10] D.M. Trujillo, H.R. Busby, Practical Inverse Analysis in Engineering, CRC Press LLC, Boca Raton, FL, 1997.
[11] H.R. Busby, D.M. Trujillo, Numerical solution to a two-dimensional inverse heat conduction problem, International Journal for
Numerical Methods in Engineering 21 (1985) 349359.
[12] INTEMPInverse heat transfer analysis, Users Manual,
1994.