Experimental study and advanced CFD simulation of fire safety performance of building external wall insulation system

Abstract

Large scale fire tests of building external wall insulation system were conducted. In the experiment, thermal-couples were mounted to measure the insulation system surface temperature and the gas temperature inside rooms at the second and third floors. Photos were also taken during the fire tests. The measurement provides information of the ignition and fire spread of the external insulation system which consists of surface protection layer, glass fibre net, bonding thin layer, anchor and the load bearing wall. Comprehensive simulations of the fire tests were carried out using an advanced CFD fire simulation software Simtec (Simulation of Thermal Engineering Complex) [1, 2], which is now released by Simtec Soft Sweden, with the turbulent flow, turbulent combustion, thermal radiation, soot formation, convective heat transfer, the fully coupled three dimensional heat transfer inside solid materials, the ‘burn-out' of the surface protection layer and the pyrolysis of the insulation layer, etc, all computed. The simulation is compared with experimental measurement for validation. The simulation well captured the burning and fire spread of the external insulation wall.