Project

Fundamental advances for the fire safety of tall timber structures including the fire decay phase

Acronym
FIReSafeTimber
Code
41T01222
Duration
01 October 2022 → 30 September 2024
Funding
European funding: various
Promotor
Research disciplines
  • Engineering and technology
    • Building physics
    • Other civil and building engineering not elsewhere classified
    • Safety engineering not elsewhere classified
Keywords
fire safety engineering timber fire decay phase tall structures
 
Project description

Tall timber buildings currently represent a sustainable solution for densely populated cities. Their main worldwide barrier relates to fire safety, and standard fire tests omit the fire decay phase. However, this is of crucial importance for timber structures because wood loses its mechanical properties at relatively low temperatures. Thus, the precise interaction between fire and structure needs to be understood because the temperature propagation through the load-bearing timber can unexpectedly lead to structural failure. FIReSafeTimber investigates key challenges related to the fire dynamics inside timber buildings and the resulting deterioration of the engineered timber mechanical properties using computational models and fire tests at various scales. FIReSafeTimber aims at developing performance-based methodologies for the fire-safe design of timber structural systems that include the effects of the fire decay phase.