Analysis on Fire Resistance of Curtain Wall System and Flame Spread of Building Exterior Wall

Abstract

The fire resistance performance of curtain wall systems played a crucial role in preventing loss in property and human life especially in high rise fires When a fire occurs it will spread to the room above in two ways: propagating on the exterior wall surface of the wall and penetrating through a joint between a vertical wall and the floor slab Perimeter joint protection serves a fire barrier to preventing fire from spreading In exterior thermal insulation system combustible thermal insulation material lead to potential fire risk In this study a full scale fire resistance performance test of a curtain wall system and a reduced scale flame spread test of thermal insulation material were conducted A commercial stick system aluminum curtain wall system was tested The specimen’s fire resistance was determined to be 58 minutes and 40 seconds based on the T-rating and 1 hour and 40 minutes based on the F-rating After 1 hour and 40 minutes the gas flow rate exceeded the limit so the test result could not be analyzed Compared with previous test the design of the test specimen was modified and a gas barrier was added The fire resistance of the test specimen was found to be enhanced In tests with thermal insulation materials 5 polystyrene products and 4 polyurethane were tested with cone calorimeter first The results showed that only PU_1 met the requirements for inflammability grade 1 Other products could not met the requirements for inflammability grade 3 2 polystyrene and 2 polyurethane products were tested in the flame spread test The results showed that melted polystyrene products can lead to the downward flame spread and to intensification of a fire In the tests with PU_1 no flame spread phenomenon was observed In the test with PU3 after being ignited PU3 burned steadily spread upward and posed a danger to the upper floor

Date of Award	2019
Original language	English
Supervisor	Ta-Hui Lin (Supervisor)