Comparison of the Fire Resistance of two Structural Wall Systems in Light Steel Framing

Abstract

The technological development of civil construction sector has led to the exploration of industrialized building systems. One of this system is the structural Light Steel Framing (LSF), which consists in cold formed steel frames juxtaposed with drywall enclosure of different materials, such as cement boards, wood boards and plasterboards. Despite of the advantages of this system, there is still a concern about their fire safety. Therefore, this paper aimed to verify the fire resistance of LSF systems with two types of plasterboard, one composed of standard plasterboard (common) and the other one by fire-resistant plasterboards. The samples were tested according to the ISO 834-1 standardized fire curve (ISO, 2014). During the tests, it was evaluated integrity, thermal insulation and structural stability of each solution. The results presented the system with fire-resistant plasterboards more secure when compared to the standard plasterboard (common). In both cases, the sample’s failure occurred due to the loss of integrity in the panels' joints.

Keywords

• Fire resistance
• light steel frame
• fire-resistant plasterboard