The verification of fire resistance regarding load-bearing capacity, integrity and insulation plays a crucial role in ensuring fire protection objectives. Due to a holistic consideration of fire resistance, not only the construction itself but also the associated joints and penetrations of building services systems must be examined to ensure that the fire resistance of the penetrated component is not negatively affected by the installation of cables, pipes, or ventilation ducts.
At the European level, the test principles of EN 1366-3 are available for verification of fire protection, which were primarily developed based on sealing systems in rigid and drywall construction. For these types of construction, standard supporting constructions are available, which allow for broad application based on few tests. In contrast, there are no standard supporting constructions e.g. timber construction like cross-laminated timber construction. This makes direct application difficult, as usually only the specifically tested supporting construction is covered, and a transfer to other supporting construction is not possible. In various research projects, the aperture edges were identified as critical locations for fire penetration. Therefore, it is usually executed with aperture framing out of gypsum material boards, which, however, leads to increased effort.
To create a basis for the development of standard supporting constructions made of solid timber products without encase cladding, the technical and regulatory foundations of solid timber constructions and sealing systems were summarized. Then, three fire tests with sealing systems were carried out in different solid timber products with a fire exposure of min. 90 minutes. The encase of the seals were left unclad to investigate the interactions between the seals and the surrounding solid timber supporting structure and to determine influencing factors.
The investigations show that sealing systems made of intumescent materials can sufficiently protect the aperture edges from fire penetration through active expansion under influence of fire. With passive sealing systems made of mineral wool panels with ablation coatings, increased charring in the aperture edges was observed. In addition, the present results of the evaluations of the temperature curves and residual cross-sections also demonstrate that the burning behaviour of the supporting structure in the surface area has no significant influence on charring in the aperture edges. Thus, rules for the application of test results with solid timber load-bearing structures can be proposed, which can be used as a basis for the development of standard supporting structures.
«
The verification of fire resistance regarding load-bearing capacity, integrity and insulation plays a crucial role in ensuring fire protection objectives. Due to a holistic consideration of fire resistance, not only the construction itself but also the associated joints and penetrations of building services systems must be examined to ensure that the fire resistance of the penetrated component is not negatively affected by the installation of cables, pipes, or ventilation ducts.
At the European...
»