The project has been running since July 2019 and its goal is to obtain verified input data to the thermal degradation and combustion model for application in fire CFD solvers. It focuses on a group of wood-based board materials (OSB, plywood, fiberboard and chipboard), which surround us in all types of buildings and significantly contribute to the origin and development of fire. The UCEEB Fire Laboratory cooperates in the research with the Technical Institute of Fire Protection and the University of Chemical Technology in Prague.
The experimental part is complex in its scope: we monitor materials from microscopic and small scales, in which their elemental composition and thermal technical characteristics are determined at normal and elevated temperatures, to real tests in a furniture calorimeter. Large-scale tests will be used for optimization and validation of values obtained by calculation.
The methodology to be developed at the end of the project will explain how to describe the wood board material in the model so that the results of thermal decomposition modeling correspond as much as possible to reality. Although the strength of the project lies mainly in the complex scope, multiple optimization of material characteristics and validation by fire tests on several scales, even partial outputs have their weight. For the needs of less detailed CFD analyzes, there is a worldwide demand of inputs verified from large-scale tests (rate of heat release, rate of weight loss or composition of combustion products of large furniture assemblies), which are performed in UCEEB.
The project Modeling of thermal degradation and combustion of wood-based board materials was supported within the program IMPAKT 1 - Strategic Support for the Development of Security Research in the Czech Republic 2019–2025 of the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic.
Presentation download
Video from project presentation on YouTube
