Performance of Materials and Assemblies under Realistic Fire Exposures

本研究解决了预测内外墙防火性能方面存在的挑战，以及最小化火灾蔓延、确保消防员和居住者安全以及减少火灾造成的财产损失的关键问题。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得到了悲惨的证明。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。由于缺乏数据，再加上火灾与墙体之间相互作用的复杂性，以及材料高温特性和响应知识的空白，限制了预测墙体火灾响应的综合数值工具的发展。这使得评估单个特征对防火性能的影响变得困难，并限制了基于性能的创新墙体设计工程设计工具的进步，从而提高了防火安全性。在本NSERC CRD中，将开发一套一致的比例测试方法，以更好地了解火灾典型的温度和热流条件下墙壁的热响应。小规模试验将表征部件材料的热物理特性、热量和质量传输，并评估简单装配设计中的火灾损害。在一个新的UW测试设施中，通过仪器完善的中等规模实验，将获得真实火灾暴露下全墙截面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，用于预测组件材料和完整组件在实际火灾暴露下的防火性能。成功的成果将降低洛科威的研发周期成本，使他们在开发新产品应用方面具有显著的市场优势，并通过增加现有消防安全应用材料的使用和推广新材料来扩大市场。建筑施工中新产品和设计的不断发展将提高生命安全，并对渐进式建筑实践和未来可能修改的建筑规范和相关法规产生推动作用。

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.