Numerical Modeling of Fire Walls to Simulate Fire Resistance Test

Abstract

A fire wall is made of a mortar wall in which water storage materials are mixed. However, the mortar fire wall is relatively heavy. A nonorganic insulator for middle and high-temperature ranges such as a calcium silicate board is expected as a good material for the fire wall because of a light weight. Usually, a nonorganic insulator such as the calcium silicate board consists of a hydrate which contains free water, physically adsorbed water, and crystalline water. Behavior of such waters should be considered for a numerical model which is used to predict thermal responses of a fire wall. A simple one-dimensional numerical model to predict thermal response of a fire wall which is made of a nonorganic hydrate insulator, is developed. The numerical computations to simulate the thermal responses for a standard fire resistance test were performed for a sand wall of five percent volume of moisture and two calcium silicate boards which contains free water, adsorbed water, and crystalline water. The experiments for the sand wall and the calcium silicate boards were also performed. The numerical results were compared with experiments. The proposed model well predicts the thermal responses of the walls.