Evaluation on Combustion Characteristics of Finishing Materials for Exterior Walls

Abstract

Existing fire test methods reply on measurement of the energy released rate to identify the combustion properties of a material. However, they are inadequate when assessing combustion characteristics of a composite material characterized by vertical flame spread and different inside/outside combustion behaviors. In addition, major factors that affect the flame spread outside the building include the combustion characteristics of materials used as well as air flow around a skyscraper. However, since it is highly difficult to analyze and forecast the air flow from a fire engineering viewpoint, an investigation of the flame spread characteristics of exterior walls of a building depends primarily on the combustion characteristics of materials. Hence, this study examined, using ISO 13785-2 testing method, the temperature changes and vertical flame spread behaviors of one of the finishing materials for exterior walls—(generic & fire-resistant) aluminium panels by a real-scale combustion experiment. According to the results of real-scale experiment, the maximum heat temperature of 987.7 °C was recorded seven minutes after the fire test was initiated while the fire-resistant aluminium panels showed the maximum heat temperature of 850.2 °C after exposed for approximately 12 min. The vertical flame spread properties put more emphasis on the time required to reach the maximum temperature rather than its magnitude and there was a five minutes difference between the materials.