New data for sandwich panels on the correlation between the SBI test method and the room corner reference scenario

Abstract

AbstractAssessment of the fire behaviour of sandwich panels is continuously under discussion. The fire behaviour of these panels is a combination of material characteristics such as the core material and mechanical behaviour of the panels such as joints, dilations etc. The use of small or intermediate scale tests can be questioned for such types of products.Within the proposed European product standard for sandwich panels (prEN 14509) the intermediate scale test method SBI (EN 13823) has been suggested as the fire test method to certify panels. The standard does, however, use quite an artificial mounting procedure, which does not fully reflect the end‐use conditions of the panels.In a previous research project conducted by Nordtest it was shown that the correlation between the SBI test method and both the ISO 9705 and ISO 13784 part 1 was insufficient. The test data produced for the SBI test method, however, did not use the above mentioned mounting technique.In this article new data for a number of products are added to the database using the mounting procedure of the product standard. The data are compared with the previous data and show that the mounting method of the product standard results in slightly more severe conditions but that there are still discrepancies with the full‐scale test results. The data also show an unacceptable level of repeatability due to the fact that small dilations result in a wide variation of classification result. The new data together with the old data show once more that it is dangerous to make a fire safety assessment of a sandwich panel based on small or intermediate scale tests. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.