Cross-laminated timber (CLT) is an engineered timber product that has been widely accepted and used in Europe and North America due to its many applications including its lightweight, installation speed and structural capabilities. Despite many applications, there is always a concern about the fire performance of any combustible material including CLT. Initially, it was proposed that the fire performance of CLT would be similar to that of solid timber. Some approximations are being used for engineered timber products acting like solid timber to measure the char depth and strength reduction (White 1995). However, the above assumption was discounted following fire testing of CLT (Klippel et al. 2014). It was observed that the behaviour of CLT is different than solid timber due to the delamination of charred layers which causes an increase in char rate. In delamination, the exposed layer of the CLT is detached from the panel due to fire exposure causing the loss of protection to the underlying timber (Johansson et al. 2018). However, if there was no delamination or layer fall-off occurrence in a CLT fire test, then the charring rate and behaviour of CLT would be similar to that of a solid timber test sample (Klippel et al. 2017). As CLT is a relatively new engineered product, only limited literature appears to be readily available on the manufacturing process of CLT panels. This paper discusses the testing of CLT panels which are manufactured in different ways from two different manufacturing facilities.
The important parameter that was considered in this research was the quality control of the CLT panels during production. Although significant research has been performed in recent years to analyse the fire performance of CLT panels manufactured from Scandinavian and North American timber, it is still uncertain whether the same research can be applied to the Irish grown timber. Therefore, this paper analyses the fire performance of CLT floor panels made from Irish Spruce which are produced using different procedures and tested under similar conditions.
Keywords: Cross-laminated timber (CLT), Charring rate, fire performance
Authors
Muhammad Yasir
Munster Technological University, Cork, Ireland
Andrew Macilwraith
Kieran Ruane
Des Walsh
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