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，确保消防员和居住者的安全以及减少火灾造成的财产损失至关重要。这些问题在最近发生在英国、迪拜和不列颠哥伦比亚省的火灾中悲惨地得到了证明。应大规模调查墙壁的详细火灾反应，但设施有限，监管测试费用昂贵，使用的仪器最少。由此产生的数据缺乏，再加上火灾和墙壁之间的相互作用的复杂性和知识的高温性能和材料的响应的差距，限制了全面的数值工具来预测墙壁对火灾的反应的发展。这使得难以评估单个特征对防火性能的影响，并限制了具有改进的防火安全性的创新墙壁设计的基于性能的工程的设计工具的进步。在本NSERC CRD中，将开发一套一致的缩放测试方法，以更好地了解火灾典型温度和热通量条件下墙壁的热响应。小规模测试将表征热物理性能、组件材料中的热量和质量传输，并评估简单组件设计中的火灾损害。在一个新的UW试验设施中，通过配备良好仪器的中尺度实验，将获得经受真实的火灾暴露的全壁部分的传热和损伤的比较结果。这些数据将支持制定、测试和修改一套先进的数值模拟和设计工具，用于预测真实火灾暴露下组件材料和完整组件的防火性能。成功的结果将降低洛科威研发周期成本，为他们提供开发新产品应用的重要市场优势，并通过增加使用现有材料和推广新材料来扩大市场。建筑施工中新产品和设计的持续开发将提高生命安全，并在进步的施工实践和未来可能对建筑法规和相关法规的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.