Performance of Materials and Assemblies under Realistic Fire Exposures

这项研究解决了在预测内墙和外墙的火灾性能方面存在的挑战，这些主题对于最大限度地减少火灾蔓延、确保消防员和乘员的安全以及减少火灾造成的财产损失至关重要。这些问题在英国、迪拜和不列颠哥伦比亚省最近发生的火灾中悲剧性地得到了证明。应该大规模调查墙壁的详细火灾反应，但设施有限，监管测试昂贵，使用的仪器最少。由此造成的数据匮乏，再加上火灾与墙之间相互作用的复杂性，以及在高温特性和材料响应方面的知识差距，限制了预测墙对火灾反应的综合数值工具的开发。这使得很难评估单个特征对防火性能的影响，并限制了基于性能的设计工具的进步，这些设计工具是基于性能的工程，具有改进的防火安全的创新墙设计。在NSERC CRD中，将开发一套一致的规模测试方法，以更好地了解墙在火灾典型温度和热流条件下的热响应。小规模测试将表征组件材料的热物理性质、热和质量传输，并在简单的组装设计中评估火灾损害。在真实火灾暴露下，整个墙体部分的热传递和损伤的比较结果将通过在新的UW测试设备中进行的仪器良好的中等规模实验来获得。这些数据将支持一套先进的数值模拟和设计工具的制定、测试和修改，这些工具用于预测组件材料和完整组件在真实火灾暴露下的燃烧性能。成功的结果将降低ROCKWOOL的研发周期成本，为其在开发新产品应用方面提供显著的市场优势，并通过增加对现有消防安全应用材料的使用和推广新材料来扩大市场。在建筑施工中不断开发新产品和设计将提高生命安全，并在逐步施工实践和未来可能对建筑法规和相关法规进行修改方面产生推动作用。

This research addresses challenges that exist in predicting fire performance of interior and exterior walls, topics vital to minimizing fire spread, ensuring fire fighter and occupant safety and reducing property damage from fires. The issues have been tragically demonstrated in recent fires in UK, Dubai and British Columbia. Detailed fire response of walls should be investigated at large-scale, but facilities are limited and regulatory tests are expensive and employ a minimum of instrumentation. The resulting dearth of data, coupled with complexity of interactions between fires and walls and gaps in knowledge of high temperature properties and response of materials, has limited development of comprehensive numerical tools to predict wall response to fires. This makes it difficult to assess the impact of individual features on fire performance and restricts advancement of design tools for performance-based engineering of innovative wall designs with improved fire safety. In this NSERC CRD, a consistent set of scaled test methods will be developed to better understand the thermal response of walls under temperature and heat flux conditions typical of fires. Small-scale tests will characterize thermo-physical properties, heat and mass transport in component materials and evaluate fire damage in simple assembly designs. Comparative results for heat transfer and damage in full wall sections subjected to real fire exposures will be obtained via well instrumented intermediate-scale experiments in a new UW test facility. The data will support formulation, testing and modification of a suite of advanced numerical simulation and design tools for prediction of fire performance of component materials and full assemblies under realistic fire exposures. Successful outcomes will reduce ROCKWOOL R&D cycle costs providing them a significant market edge in developing new product applications and leading to market expansion through increased use of existing, and promotion of new, materials for fire safety applications. Continued development of new products and designs in building construction will improve life safety and have driving impact in terms of progressive construction practices and potential future modifications to building codes and related regulations.