Abstract of the paper: _______________________ External Thermal Insulation Composite System (ETICS) facades with expanded polystyrene (EPS) insulation and thin rendering are applied frequently in buildings. Considering high combustibility of EPS, with these facades concerns also arise regarding spread of a possible fire between neighbouring compartments of high-rise buildings. Fire tests of two large-scale facades were performed to study two parameters presumably influencing significantly the fires of such facades in real-life settings, i.e. incident heat flux upon the facade%s surface (IHFFS) and damage of the facade%s render (the latter being a consequence of poor or unfinished construction work, ageing or fire-induced thermal strain). The first facade was rendered fully and was exposed to moderately-fast increasing IHFFS. In the second (partially unrendered) facade case the IHFFS progressed faster. The facade flame body (temperatures and shape) was monitored by thermocouples, photo and video cameras. For detection of melting of EPS and internal burning, thermocameras were used within the facades areas outside the visible plume. In the plume zone, however, a group of thermocouples was embedded inside EPS and the shapes (plateaus and slopes) of the collected time-temperature graphs were observed for these purposes. The IHFFS imposed on the facades during fire testing were estimated by numerical calculations. In both cases the first pronounced render crack was evolved at the estimated average between-windows IHFFS of around 30 kW/m2 and was followed by internal burning of EPS. While the latter did not seem to spread across the facade for the fully-rendered facade, a fast fire spread was detected for the second specimen. Meaning of the paper for the project: _________________________________ This paper is highlighted as one of the most important scientific result of the postdoctoral project because it not only presents experimental data from a fire test of two EPS ETICS facades (Section 2.2.2) but also explains results from the corresponding computational simulations (see Section 2.3 of the paper). These were carried out as two of the four test cases mentioned in the penultimate paragraph of point 3 of this report. The simplified computational models of both façades were prepared in FDS and mainly served for comparison (validation) of the measured and calculated façade flame temperatures. A good agreement between both results was discovered. Combustion of ignitable materials (wooden cribs at the foot of the facades and wooden cladding of the second façade) was for purposes of the facade fire models described by simplified material submodels prepared in the developed tool GeneticMat.
COBISS.SI-ID: 2240871