SCI and industry partners from the Light Steel Forum have carried out a series of fire tests on loadbearing light steel framed walls subject to fire from both sides. Loadbearing walls within a fire compartment can be exposed to fire on two sides simultaneously unless there are measures in place to prevent the spread of fire within the fire compartment.
A series of ad-hoc two-sided fire tests were conducted, SCI analysed the results and performed thermal finite element analysis to develop a suitable design method for this specific situation. The resulting design method is described in detail in the new SCI publication P442. The method requires single-sided fire test data for the wall and calibrated numerical thermal modelling to determine the temperatures of the light steel sections when the wall is exposed to fire on two sides. The new publication is a supplement to existing SCI publication P424 (2021) which provides comprehensive design guidance on the more general topic of fire resistance of light steel framing.
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