USING CFAST AND FDS TO EVALUATE THE RESPONSE OF CLT IN NATURAL AND STANDARD FIRES

摘要

A large-scale room test was conducted to evaluate the performance of CLT construction protected with two sheets of 16 mm type X gypsum board in the pre-flashover, post-flashover and cool-down phases of a severe living room fire. Since minimal or no charring of the CLT was observed in the room test, additional small-scale furnace tests were performed on gypsum-protected CLT specimens using standard and simulated natural fire exposures. CFAST was used to quantify the thermal environment and exposure conditions of walls and ceiling in the room test. The pyrolysis model in Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) was used to simulate the response of the protected CLT in the room fire test and the furnace experiments. The input parameters for the pyrolysis model were based on small-scale measurements and thermal property data reported in the literature for CLT and gypsum board. With these input parameters, FDS generally under-predicts the ability of the gypsum board to protect the CLT. Possible reasons for the discrepancies are discussed, and recommendations are made for future work to address the limitations of the present approach.