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Nine participants, representing eight different Swedish fire consultancy firms participated in a Round Robin study where two different cases were simulated with the Fire Dynamics Simulator. The first case included a large open warehouse where the activation of a sprinkler system was to be studied. In the second case time to critical conditions in a theatre was to be calculated. The participants were given clear instructions on the building layout and heat release rate for the two cases. Still, the results demonstrate a significant variation in time to sprinkler system activation (range of 110 seconds) and available safe escape time (range of 60 seconds), between the participants. It is important to emphasise that some degree of variation is unavoidable, as engineers can model things differently without the modelling solution necessarily being incorrect. Even though it is hard to isolate and specific cause of the variation, some of the variation seen in this study is related to modelling choices that are questionable and consequently problematic for the reliability of the fire safety design.

Several attempts have been made in the past to develop a European harmonized testing and assessment method for façades before the European commission decided to publish a call for tender on the topic. A project consortium from five countries (Sweden, UK, France, Germany and Hungary) applied to the call for tender and was contracted to develop a European approach to assess the fire performance of façades. 24 sub-contractors and 14 stakeholder entities were part of the project. The objective of the European project was to address a request from the Standing Committee of Construction (SCC) to provide EC Member States regulators with a means to regulate the fire performance of façade systems based on a European approach agreed by SCC. The initial stages of this project were focused on establishing a register of the regulatory requirements in all Member States in relation to the fire performance of façade systems, and to identify those Member States who have regulatory requirements for the fire performance façade systems which go beyond the current EN 13501 (reaction to fire and fire resistance) classification systems and to collate the details of these additional requirements. After having confirmed the regulatory needs a testing and classification methodology based on BS 8414 and DIN 4102-20 was developed to address the identified key performance and classification characteristics. This paper is a short overview of results the two-year development work, which Final Report published by the European Commission in 2018. © 2020 The Authors. Fire and Materials published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

A new more insulated and faster responding plate thermometer (PT) is introduced, which has been developed for measurements particularly in air at ambient temperature. It is a cheaper and more pract ...

The impact of different passive protective measures against external vertical fire spread was investigated using the numerical tool Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS). The numerical study was divided into a validation study and a comparative analysis. The validation study was performed to evaluate FDS as a calculation tool for modelling external vertical fire spread and was conducted using experimental results from a large-scale fire test done on a SP FIRE 105 test rig at SP, Sweden. It was concluded that FDS 6.2.0 could reproduce the experimental results with a reasonable level of detail. In the comparative analysis, the impact on the external fire from a smaller apartment was studied in FDS with different configurations of horizontal projections and spandrels in the building exterior. Also, the effects of an upper and lower facade set-back configuration were studied. The results show that facade solutions based on a horizontal projection or an upper facade set-back configuration result in comparable or better protection compared with a defined spandrel height. The results also show that a spandrel height of at least 1.2 m can be replaced by a 60-cm-deep horizontal projection, given that the balcony is wider than the underlying opening. (Less)

A comparison between full-scale façade fire tests where SP Fire 105 and BS 8414–1 were used regarding repeatability and the use of modelling to discern changes in the set-ups is presented. Two test series according to BS 8414 – 1 were repeated outside using the same façade systems on two different days whereas for the SP Fire 105 a set of common façade systems in Sweden were tested indoors. In particular, the results show that the wind around the test set-up may have a significant impact on the tests and that the heat exposure to the façade surface will depend on the thickness of the test specimen where an increased temperature in front of the façade, and a decreased temperature on the façade 2.1 m above the fire room, is observed experimentally. The heat exposure to the test specimen varies to a more limited extent when an uncontrollable free burning fire source is used (in this study heptane and wood respectively) and that this variation increases when wind is present.

In this paper a comparative simulation study on three large scale façade testing methods, namely the SP Fire 105, BS 8414 – 1 and the ISO 13785 – 2 methods, is presented. Generally good correspondence between simulations and experimental data has been found, provided that thermal properties of the façade material and heat release rates are known however the correspondence seems to deviate in close proximity of the fire source. Furthermore, a statistical ensemble for evaluating the effects stemming from uncertainty in input data is used. Here, it was found using a statistical ensemble the variability in input data could be assessed and that the variability was smaller in the ISO 13785 – 2 compared to the BS 8414 – 1 method. The heat release rates (HRR) used in the simulations were adopted from measurements except for the ISO method where the information in the standard was used to approximate the HRR. Furthermore, a quantitative similarity between the HRR in the ISO method and the British method was found.