G-BIFE · Glazing behaviour in a fire environment
FP6 — Marie Curie Actions (Human Resources and Mobility)
- Duration
- 2009-11-01 → 2010-10-31
- EU contribution
- €49,100
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- IIF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Final Activity and Management Report Summary - G-BIFE (Glazing behaviour in a fire environment)
A real scale experimental system was built up to research the glazing behaviours. It includes control system, assembly cabin, radiation heating system, exhausting system and data collection system. More than 20 experiments were designed and conducted in a orthogonal method, and the L8 (27) level was used here. The results reveal that the glass thickness, edge roughness, and heating rate are very important to the glass first crack. The glass size, and shade area play less important role in glass crack. The gesso filler thickness and heat source location play fewer roles on the glass crack. The temperature difference at the first crack varies from 122.5 degrees Celsius to 142.6 degrees Celsius for the different thickness glass. The thermal stress at first crack is calculated and the maximum thermal stress is 90.0MPa, and the minimum value is 54.85MPa with the mean value of 69.13 MPa. Furthermore, the three kinds of crack patterns were summarised and in most cases, the crack patterns are the combined result of the three kinds of cracks. Two typical cases were compared with the experiments, and the first crack temperature differences agree well with the experimental result, which indicate that the code can be used as an economic method to evaluate and investigate glazing behaviour under thermal loading.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
The breakage of glass pane during a fire could influence the fire behaviour due to the change from impermeable barriers to large ventilation sources, resulting in the occurrence of the dangerous backdraft phenomena or post flashover flames emerging outside of the openings leading to rapid fire spread to other floors and in the most severe cases even to adjacent buildings.The project will address the thermally induced stress response of glass to the heat fluxes from fire. Two separable physical processes will be considered. The first is heat transfer from the fire and hot gases to the glass and the second is the development of thermal stresses due to the temperature difference in the exposed area of the glass from the part shielded by the frame. The later of ten lead to development of cracks and eventually the fracturing of the glass.The key objectives are as follows:- Develop a radiation heat transfer model for accurate prediction of temperature and heat flux distributions on the glass.- Develop a model f or predicting the times to the formation of the first crack and all subsequent cracks important to glass pane fall-out.- Couple the above model with an existing CFD code to achieve combined prediction of fire loading and the occurrence of the cracks.-Develop and validate a brittle material fracture mechanics model to capture the propagation of the cracks.- Quantify the effects of window scale and aspect ratio, glass thickness, incident heat flux intensity and distribution, and pressure differential on the formation and propagation of cracks in small, medium and large-scale furnaces.- Determine from laboratory tests a probable fall-out range in terms of the number, size and distribution of the cracks required to isolate pieces of the glass pane from the frame.- Develop and validate a coupled CFD and fracture mechanics model for predicting a probable window fall-out range in terms of the number, size and distribution of the cracks.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY OF CHINA · HEFEI, ANHUI 230026CoordinatorChina
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union