engleski

Contribution of fire barriers in preventing fire spread across façades – experimental testing performed by University of Zagreb

To satisfy the requirements set for reducing energy consumption in buildings, the thickness of the insulation layers in façade systems has increased at least twofold, with a tendency of further increase. The insulation layers can be made of either inorganic non-combustible materials or organic combustible ones. In case of fire, application of combustible insulation materials in façade systems increases the risk of fire spread vertically across façade and to adjacent buildings. Due to special fire safety problems related to high-rise buildings (i.e. risk associated with vertical spread across façades, prolonged evacuation, rescue not possible from outside, etc.), in most European countries, only non-combustible materials for façade application are used. For the lower buildings, e.g. with height from 11 to 22 m, the use of combustible materials in façade systems is allowed in Republic of Croatia, but if interrupted with fire barriers. A fire barrier represents a non-combustible material used to break up continuous combustible construction to delay fire spread from its one side to the other. Hereafter, results of large scale fire testing performed on EPS (expanded polystyrene) based ETICS (External Thermal Insulation Contact Systems) specimens with and without fire barriers are shown. In the absence of a harmonized EU standard for large scale façade fire testing, fire performance of ETICS system in presented tests was assessed according to standard BS 8414-1.

fire safety of façades, fire barriers, large-scale testing, ETICS systems

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