Building fire-safety: aluminium composites take the heat

摘要

On 14 June, the 24-storey Grenfell Tower block of public housing flats in North Kensington, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, West London, became a hot topic, literally, but for the wrong reasons. Fire razed the high-rise residential complex and fatally injured nearly a 100 or more people who were trapped in the building. What accelerated the fire, according to reports, was the tower's rainscreen exterior cladding. The building, built in 1974, had just undergone renovation work in 2016. The ￡8.7 million-makeover included the addition of windows and a polyethylene (PE)-filled aluminium cladding.