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Timber under real fire conditions – the influence of oxygen content and gas velocity on the charring behavior

Joachim Schmid (Institute of Structural Engineering, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland)
Alessandro Santomaso (Commissario delegato per l’emergenza della mobilità riguardante l’A4, Trieste, Italy)
Daniel Brandon (RISE, Research Institute of Sweden, Stockholm, Sweden)
Ulf Wickström (Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden)
Andrea Frangi (Institute of Structural Engineering, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland)

Journal of Structural Fire Engineering

ISSN: 2040-2317

Article publication date: 19 September 2017

Issue publication date: 11 October 2018

528

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influencing factors on the charring behaviour of timber, the char layer and the charring depth in non-standard fires.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper summarizes outcomes of tests, investigating the influences on the charring behavior of timber by varying the oxygen content and the gas velocity in the compartment. Results show that charring is depending on the fire compartment temperature, but results show further that at higher oxygen flow, char contraction was observed affecting the protective function of the char layer.

Findings

In particular, in the cooling phase, char contraction should be considered which may have a significant impact on performance-based design using non-standard temperature fire curves where the complete fire history including the cooling phase has to be taken into account.

Originality/value

Up to now, some research on non-standard fire exposed timber member has been performed, mainly based on standard fire resistance tests where boundary conditions as gas flow and oxygen content especially in the decay phase are not measured or documented. The approach presented in this paper is the first documented fire tests with timber documenting the data required.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors want to acknowledge FORMAS who funded the study as well as the COST framework for support in general and COST FP1404 who provided a network for discussing and developing new ideas and testing approaches.

Citation

Schmid, J., Santomaso, A., Brandon, D., Wickström, U. and Frangi, A. (2018), "Timber under real fire conditions – the influence of oxygen content and gas velocity on the charring behavior", Journal of Structural Fire Engineering, Vol. 9 No. 3, pp. 222-236. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSFE-01-2017-0013

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited

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