Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

The fire resistance "rating" of a building component is determined by its performance in a standard furnace test, for example IS0 834 and ASTM E119. For these "ratings" to be meaningful it is important that specimens be subject to the same standard test wherever it may be conducted. However, existing methods only standardize on a furnace thermocouple temperature-time curve and there are substantial differences in the design of standard furnaces both nationally and internationally. There is therefore considerable variation in perceived fire resistance performance. This paper presents the first application of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to the simulation of a full-size fire-resistance furnace following the IS0 834 prescribed time-temperature curve. The results illustrate that, whilst following the standard, considerable spatial and temporal variations exist in both incident radiative and convective heat flux to the test specimen. Although no comparison with experimental data is presented at this time, the results illustrate the potential utility of CFD in addressing furnace harmonization issues.