Cross Laminated Timber Compartment Fire Tests

This study quantifies the contribution of CLT building elements to compartment fires and characterizes the effect of gypsum board on delaying or preventing involvement of the CLT in the fire under varied ventilation conditions. Six compartments (9.1 m long x 4.6 m wide x 2.7 m high) were assembled out of prefabricated CLT panels. Each panel was factory assembled using five plies of 35 mm thick lumber for a total thickness of 175 mm. A polyurethane adhesive was used to hold the plies together. The compartment had a rough opening in Wall W2 (front) of 1.8 m wide x 2.0 m high in four tests and 3.6 m wide x 2.0 m high in two tests. The inside of the compartments was fully or partially lined using multiple layers of 15.9-mm thick Type X gypsum board. Real residential contents and furnishings were used to provide a fire load density of 550 MJ/m2. The fire tests were conducted without sprinklers and without firefighting intervention. These experiments were conducted under the auspices of the Fire Protection Research Foundation in collaboration with the National Research Council Canada (project lead).