The invention discloses a steel structure fire protection design method based on fire heat release rate measurement. The method includes the steps of 1, determining design parameters; 2, measuring heat release rate; 3, calculating the temperature of the outer surface, which plumes rise to, of a fire protective layer of a steel structural member, to be specific, 301, correcting the heat release rate, 302, calculating the temperature of a fire source place, and 303, calculating the temperature of the outer surface of the fire protective layer of the steel structural member; 4, calculating a test section-material comprehensive coefficient; 5, calculating an actual section-material comprehensive coefficient, to be specific, calculating the actual section-material comprehensive coefficient Alpha't according to a similarity relation; and 6, determining a minimum design thickness of the fire protective layer of the steel structural member. The method has the advantages that the steps are simple, the design is reasonable, implementing is convenient, effect is good, and well solved are such problems of the existing methods of calculating thickness of the protective layer of the steel structure that the process includes many steps, calculating time is long, iteration errors are unavoidable, and the influence of an actual fire upon the fire tolerance of the steel structure is not truly reflected.