• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.75-85
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• 2018

The Grenpell tower fire in England in June of 2016 is a representative example of damage caused by a vertical fire spreading through external insulation. Organic insulation materials, which are widely used in external insulation, have the disadvantage that they have good insulation performance but are vulnerable to fire. Aluminum composite panels are used as exterior wall finishing materials, and plastics used in aluminum are regarded as the cause of vertical fire spread. Due to the steel frame used to secure the aluminum composite panel to the outer wall, a cavity is formed between the outer wall and outer wall finish. When a fire occurs on the outer wall, the flammable outer wall as well as the flame generated from the heat-insulating material spreads vertically through the cavity, resulting in damage to people and property. In Korea, material unit performance tests are carried out by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport notice 2015 - 744. However, in the UK, the BS 8414 test is used to measure the vertical fire spreading time on the outer wall in real scale fire tests. In this study, the risk of external wall fire was evaluated in an actual fire by conducting a real scale wall fire test (BS 8414), which was carried out in Europe, using aluminum composite panels of semi-noncombustible materials suitable for current domestic standards. The purpose of this study was to confirm the limitations of material unit evaluation of finishing materials and to confirm the necessity of introducing a system to prevent the spread of outer wall fire through an actual scale fire test.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.89-105
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• 2016

The post - fire investigation is conducted on a fire-affected reinforced concrete shear wall building to ascertain the level of its strength degradation due to the fire incident. Fire incident took place in a three-storey building made of reinforced concrete shear wall and roof with operating floors made of steel beams and chequered plates. The usage of the building is to handle explosives. Elevated temperature during the fire is estimated to be $350^{\circ}C$ based on visual inspection. Destructive (core extraction) and non-destructive (rebound hammer and ultrasonic pulse velocity) tests are conducted to evaluate the concrete strength. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM) are used for analyzing micro structural changes of the concrete due to fire. Tests are conducted for concrete walls and roof slab on both burnt and unburnt locations. The analysis of test results reveals no significant degradation of the building after the fire which signifies that the structure can be used with full expectancy of performance for the remaining service life. This document can be used as a reference for future forensic investigations of similar fire affected concrete structures.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2019.05a
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• pp.95-96
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• 2019

In this study, fire resistance test according to KS F 2257-8: 2015 was carried out to compare fire resistance for wall consisted of gypsum boards with two types of drywall with gypsum boards which is based to lightweight studs. As a result, it was found that the fire resistance of the wall constructed with 12.5 mm of general gypsum board was 16 minutes higher than that of the wall constructed 9.5 mm in accordance with integrity and was 9 minutes higher than that of the wall(9.5 mm) depending on insulation. If the wall with the gypsum board 12.5 mm is constructed, it can be confirmed that the fire resistance is improved by about 43%.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.37-43
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• 2017

Domestic sandwich panel buildings are widely used on walls and roofs of factories and warehouse facilities. Factory and warehouse facilities have high fire load and rapid spread of fire due to their use characteristics, leading to large fires. Due to the characteristics of materials, walls and roofs are collapsed, resulting in life damage and property damage. In this regard, this study examined domestic and international standards of sprinkler facilities to prevent ignition of sandwich panel walls. Also, in order to check whether the fire was prevented by installing the head on the wall of the sandwich panel, the fire test was carried out with 10 cm, 60 cm, and 120 cm from the wall along the sprinkler head installation standard of domestic fire safety standards. As a result of the fire test, it was confirmed that the sandwich panel was prevented from igniting when the head of water pressure 0.1 MPa and water quantity K-80 was installed. According to the separation distance, it was impossible to measure the temperature at 10 cm, but at 60 cm, At the maximum temperature of $525^{\circ}C$ and 120 cm, the maximum temperature of the wall of the sandwich panel was measured as $276^{\circ}C$. As a result of the fire test, considering the fire point of 450 degrees Celsius in the fire test of the sandwich panel, the distance from the sandwich panel wall to the combustible is more than 120 cm.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2021.11a
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• pp.54-55
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• 2021

This study compared the fire safety standards for windows of Korea, the U.S. and Japan to prevent fire expansion through exterior wall openings, and conducted experiments using PVC and aluminum window frames, which are widely used in Korea.The experiment is KS F 2845 which combines frames of the same thickness and area with single-window form and 1 hour fire resistance glass with 8T thickness. Experiments showed that the PVC window was about 9 minutes and the aluminum window was about 26 minutes. However, in Korea, there are no test standards for windows installed at the opening of the exterior wall. In addition, fire safety standards for windows shall be established along with the designation of fire prevention zones.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.85-91
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• 2012

To reduce human life and property damage at the fire in a building, it is most critical to control flame spread in the early stage. Fire spread prevention measure generally includes fire resistance performance securing of structure member in the arson zone and use limitation based on combustion performance of finishing material. The latter is most fundamental fire safety design to determine flame spread, but domestic combustion test determines combustion performance by specimen sized fire test method. Thus, there are many restrictions in the determination of combustion performance by composite material such as sandwich panel. Especially, outer finishing material uses a variety of composite material such as dry bit, aluminum composite panel, and metal panel compared to inner finishing material. Therefore, this study would determine vertical fire spread features by a full scaled fire experiment through the test method of ISO 13785-2, an international test standard.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.345-352
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• 2023

A thermal-mechanical coupling finite element model of the steel-plate concrete composite (SC) wall is established, taking into account the strain rate effect and variation in mechanical and thermal properties under different temperatures. Verifications of the model against previous fire test and impact test results are carried out. The impact response of the SC wall under elevated temperatures is further investigated. The influences of the fire exposure time on the impact force and displacement histories are discussed. The results show that as the fire exposure time increases, the deflection increases and the impact resistance decreases. A formula is proposed to calculate the reduction of the allowable impact energy considering the fire exposure time.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.104-111
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• 2011

Aluminum has been widely used as frame materials in the curtain walls. Recently, use of steel as a curtain wall frame is being considered due to its higher strength and thermal resistance than aluminum. In this study, fire tests on the basis of EN 13830 were performed with aluminum and steel-aluminum hybrid curtain walls. From the tests, fire resistance integrity, thermal insulation, and radiation properties were evaluated for both systems and compared. According to the test results, the steel-aluminum hybrid curtain wall showed better fire-performance than the typical aluminum curtain wall for the fire resistance integrity and radiation properties. Although, the fire resistance performance for the insulation property was 6 min for both the two frames, the collapses were occurred at 36 min for the steel-aluminum hybrid curtain wall and at 13 min for the aluminum hybrid curtain wall.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2013.05a
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• pp.323-325
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• 2013

This study on the proposes a spalling mechanism based on the results of a fire resistance test of HSC(High Strength Concrete) considering important factors of spalling occurrence. The factors considered in this two-sided are fire resistance test to ISO 834 fire curve. In this study, explosive spalling phenomena in the specimens were investigation.

• Architectural research
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.21-27
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• 2022

For the past decade, South Korea had experienced catastrophic building fires, which resulted in consider-ably high number of casualties. This motivated research to develop fire-safe wall assemblies. In this study Fire Risk Analysis (FRA) is conducted as part of the project designing phase to ensure fire safety of the final product. Traditional approach was to consider fire performance at the end of the designing stage, when PASS/FAIL fire test results are required to be submitted to the Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ). By applying a fire risk analysis to guide the designing phase, overall fire safety of a wall assembly can be achieved more systematically as conducting FRA allows designers to clearly identify elements that are more vulnerable to fire and simply replace them with other practical options. Severity of fire risk is determined by considering the fire hazards of a wall assembly such as the exterior layer, insulation, vertical connectivity, and external ignition sources (e.g., photovoltaic panels). Frequency of fire risk is assessed based on the factors affecting fire likelihood, which are air cavity and fire-stopping applied in the design, and random design changes occurring during on-site construction. Fire risk matrix is proposed based on these fire risk factors and efforts to reduce the fire risk level associated with the wall assembly are given by systematically assessing the fire risk factors identified from fire risk analysis. Current study demonstrates how fire risk analysis can be applied to develop fire-safe walls by reducing the relevant fire risks- both severity and frequency.