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2023 (English)In: Fire safety journal, ISSN 0379-7112, E-ISSN 1873-7226, Vol. 140, article id 103869Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Exposing cross-laminated timber (CLT) structures in buildings is increasingly popular in modern buildings. However, large timber surfaces, window facades, and different geometries can change the fire dynamics in a compartment. The effect of those parameters, therefore, needs to be studied. Two large-scale CLT compartment fire experiments (95 m2) have consequently been performed. The experiments were designed to represent a modern office building with an open-plan space and large window openings. In this experiment, #FRIC-01, the ceiling was exposed. The wood crib fire developed slowly and travelled approximately 1.5 m before the ceiling ignited at 32.5 min. Thereafter the fire spread rapidly across the ceiling and wood crib before it shortly after retracted. Three such cycles of rapid spread followed by a retraction occurred within 13 min, whereby the wood crib fire grew larger for each cycle. After the flames extended through the compartment for the fourth time, the fire remained fully developed. After a short period of intense burning, the CLT self-extinguished while the wood crib fire was still burning. The compartment withstood full burnout, and no reignition occurred despite some delamination and using an adhesive that lacks a demonstrated resistance against glue-line integrity failure. © 2023 The Authors
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Elsevier Ltd, 2023
Keywords
CLT, Compartment fire, Fire spread, Large-scale, Self-extinction, Adhesives, Fires, Laminating, Office buildings, Timber, Compartment fires, Condition, Cross laminated, Cross-laminated timber, Laminated timber, Large-scales, Timber structures, Wood crib fire, Ceilings
National Category
Building Technologies
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:ri:diva-65967 (URN)10.1016/j.firesaf.2023.103869 (DOI)2-s2.0-85166625665 (Scopus ID)
Note
The compartment in the experiment was built of CLT elements in three walls and the ceiling, while the fourth wall was almost entirely open with four large openings. The CLT elements in the roof rested on the three CLT walls. They were supported on the fourth wall by a 140 mm × 315 mm glulam beam resting into a pre-cut hole in the CLT end walls and supported by three aerated concrete columns. The inner geometry of the compartment was 18.80 m × 5.00 m x 2.52 m (L x W x H). Deviations up to ±0.05 m were present for the ceiling height caused by a slightly tilted floor, with the highest level by the window wall. The deviations are not included in the drawings. A sketch of the experimental setup is shown in Fig. 1, and pictures of the compartment are given in Figs. 2 and 3.The experiments were conducted at RISE Fire Research in Norway as part of the Fire Research and Innovation Centre (FRIC) (www.fric.no). The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support by the Research Council of Norway through the program BRANNSIKKERHET, project number 294649, and by partners of the research centre FRIC. A special thanks to the FRIC partners StoraEnso, Rockwool, Hunton, and to Saint-Gobain AS and Byggmakker Handel AS for providing building materials. The authors also wish to thank Panos Kotsovinos and David Barber at ARUP, David Lange and Juan P. Hidalgo at The University of Queensland, and Johan Sjöström at RISE for valuable discussions in the planning phase of the experiments.
2023-08-232023-08-232024-04-09Bibliographically approved