![Sample our Built Environment journals, sign in here to start your access, Latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5926/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Built-Environment.jpg"})
Abstract
A common consideration in the rehabilitation of historic timber structures is addressing the concerns for fire safety. Heritage structures can have softwoods but depending on the time they were built they may also have hardwoods present. Currently, there is a lack of knowledge on the char rate of heritage hardwood and softwood. This study presents initial findings into the charring of these historic materials as they would be encountered in practice through samples taken from pre-existing aged timber structures in Canada that are greater than 100 years old. The materials were tested in a cone calorimeter following a modified ASTM 1354 procedure. Hardwood samples typically exhibited a faster charring rate than the softwoods but the charring rates converged at 1.05 mm/min when exposed to higher fluxes of 50 kW/m2. As rehabilitation and readaptation may require performance-based approaches such as structural fire modelling, a provisional framework for a numerical model using LS DYNA for historic timber members is presented. The objective is to identify future research and testing areas to develop a higher certainty model. In the a-priori model presented, results showed conservative charring rate results with charring trends seen in the experiment generally being followed.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Arup for its support. The NSERC Alliance Next Generation Wood Program is acknowledged for supporting students on this research programme. Dr Bronwyn Chorlton and Chloe Jeanneret are thanked for technical contributions. Zena Protcenko from Arup is also acknowledged for independently reviewing the accuracy of some of the numerical LS-DYNA models developed for this research.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Statement of Authorship
All persons who have met authorship criteria in this manuscript are listed as authors. These authors certify that they have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for this manuscript’s content, including the participation in the concept, design, analysis, writing and revision of this manuscript. Those that do not meet these criteria are listed in the acknowledgements.
Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Supplemental Data
Online supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/0305215X.2024.2340566.
Notes
* For further details, see Wood for Good, COP26, 2021. Available from https://woodforgood.com/cop26/
** For further information, see Acton Ostry Architects. Brock Commons Phase 1.