Fire resistance testing of aluminum-glass partitions

Abstract

Glass-aluminum building facades, as well as glazed walls intended to construct internal partitions of various types with glass doors, the purpose of which is to create fire zones, must satisfy certain fire resistance requirements stated in the codes. The offer of domestic and foreign manufacturers consists of system fire resistant partitions manufactured in the EI 30 to EI 180 fire resistance classes. Fire retardant properties of such partitions are verified experimentally, and the technical approvals are issued based on the results of such tests. In this paper the results of fire tests performed on selected partitions made by the leading domestic maker of glass-aluminum systems and representative for the whole commercial offer of Aluprof S.A. are presented. Fire resistance of doors and partitions made of aluminum sections with fire protecting insulation in one or several chambers and Polflam glazing panes differing in thickness of swelling gel have been tested. In this paper a comparative analysis of the temperature increase curves obtained on the external surface of glass panes and aluminum sections forming the tested partitions has been performed. The relationships between the internal structure of aluminum sections and glazing panes and the shape of empirical curves have been indicated. A mixed tangent-secant linearization of these curves has been proposed as well as presentation of the experimental results in the non-dimensional coordinates. Such presentation form of final experimental results allows for a clear interpretation of laboratory tests with reliable documenting of nominal fire resistance requirements.

Keywords

• aluminum
• fire
• fire resistance
• glass
• partitions
• laboratory tests