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Reaction to fire performance
Published in Andrew Buchanan, Birgit Östman, Fire Safe Use of Wood in Buildings, 2023
In the United States, the Steiner tunnel test is the most common material-flammability test method prescribed by building codes to limit flame spread over wall and ceiling finishes. The apparatus and test procedure are described in ASTM E84. The test specimen is 7.6 m long and is mounted in the ceiling position of a long tunnel-like enclosure. It is exposed at one end to a 79 kW gas burner. There is a forced draft through the tunnel from the burner end. The measurements consist of flame spread over the surface and light obscuration by the smoke in the exhaust duct of the tunnel. Test duration is 10 min. A flame spread index (FSI) is calculated based on the area under the curve of flame tip location versus time. The FSI is 0 for a cement board and is normalised to approximately 100 for red oak. The smoke-developed index (SDI) is equal to 100 times the ratio of the area under the curve of light absorption versus time to the area under the curve for a heptane pan fire.
Design and production of sustainable lightweight concrete precast sandwich panels for non-load bearing partition walls
Published in Cogent Engineering, 2021
Fayez Moutassem, Kadhim Alamara
As shown in Table 4, the EPS concrete sandwich system successfully passed the 2-hour fire rating test conducted following ASTM E119 (2020). Moreover, the EPS concrete sandwich system successfully passed the flame spread and smoke development tests conducted following ASTM E84 (2020). As per ASTM E84, Class A corresponds to a flame spread index of 0–25 and smoke developed index of less 0–450. Based on the index values of 0 determined for the flame spread and smoke development as shown in Table 4, the EPS concrete product classification falls under Class A. These results were anticipated because bonding the EPS beads to concrete significantly improves its performance against fire, flame spread and smoke development. As shown in Table 4, the thermal insulation, U-values, determined for the 100 mm and 150 mm-thick EPS concrete sandwich panels were 0.66 and 0.42, respectively. These low values are consistent with past studies (Shi et al., 2019; Xu et al., 2016). As such, it is recommended to use the 150 mm-thick panel system for exterior walls due to its lower U-value i.e. higher thermal insulation. Use of special finishing materials can further reduce the U-values.