FPInnovations conducted a research project to study the construction of mid-rise wood exit shafts in Ontario and Québec. The scope of the project included an investigation into the concerns that have been raised in regards to the use of wood exits in mid-rise buildings, an analysis of recent Canadian fire statistics in residential multi-family structures, and a fire demonstration of a mass timber wall and supported light-frame floor. This report describes the fire demonstration completed as part of this project; this report acts as a supplement to the full project report.
The objective of this work is to generate fire resistance data for NLT assemblies to address significant gaps in technical knowledge. This research will support designers and builders in the use of mass timber assemblies in larger and taller buildings, as well as provide scientific justification for Authorities Having Jurisdiction (AHJ) to review and accept this construction method. The intent is to demonstrate that NLT construction can meet or exceed NBCC fire safety requirements for use in buildings of mass timber construction.
The data could be used towards the inclusion of an NLT fire resistance calculation methodology into Annex B of CSA 086 - Engineering Design for Wood, which currently addresses only glue-laminated timber (GLT), structural composite lumber (SCL) and cross-laminated timber (CLT).
There is growing interest from the Canadian wood products industry to produce and use cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels in construction. Because this is a new product in North America, there is a need to demonstrate that the product meets various performance attributes such as structural resistance, sound transmission and fire resistance.
This research aims to address two primary objectives which will support the North American adoption of CLT. First, a generic calculation method for determining the fire-resistance of CLT assemblies is needed to enable producers to manufacture a number of different configurations of panels without the need to run a large number of full-scale fire tests. Second, the CLT assemblies chosen for testing have been identified as the most likely configurations to be used thereby providing test data to support the claims of fire-resistance to help satisfy the authority having jurisdiction.
This report provides results of a state-of-the-art literature review of studies and surveys on seismic performance of wood structures. The review was performed to develop an understanding of the seismic response and design of mid-rise/multi-storey wood buildings and to explore gaps and challenges in the seismic design of these structures. This report includes summaries from results of the previous experimental, numerical and analytical studies as well as post-earthquake surveys on seismic response/resistance of wood buildings. The main structural systems considered in this study were wood light frames, commonly used in North America. The results of this review showed the dynamic response characteristics of multi-storey wood buildings, e.g. effects of higher modes, would play a major role in the seismic design of such structures. However, a proper design of timber structures would mitigate their damage and failure in the event of earthquakes.
A research project, Wood and Wood-Hybrid Midrise Buildings, was undertaken to develop information to be used as the basis for alternative/acceptable solutions for mid-rise construction using wood structural elements. As part of this project, four large-scale fire experiments were conducted to evaluate the fire performance of two forms of encapsulated combustible structural wood systems, a lightweight wood-frame (LWF) system (2 experiments [3]) and a crosslaminated timber (CLT) system (1 experiment [4]). The fourth experiment [5] involved a test structure constructed using a steel frame system described below. Each experiment involved construction of a test set-up of an unsprinklered full-size apartment unit, intended to represent a portion of a mid-rise (e.g. six-storey) building.
This report provides the results of the test with an encapsulated LWF setup representing an apartment in a mid-rise (e.g. six-storey) building.
A research project, Wood and Wood-Hybrid Midrise Buildings, was undertaken to develop information to be used as the basis for alternative/acceptable solutions for mid-rise construction using wood structural elements. The effectiveness of the encapsulation approach in limiting the involvement of wood structural materials in fires was demonstrated in this research project through bench-, intermediate- and full-scale fire experiments. These results for encapsulated lightweight wood-frame (LWF) systems and encapsulated cross-laminated timber (CLT) systems are documented in a series of reports [3, 4, 5, 6].
In addition to developing the encapsulation approach for protecting the wood structural materials to meet the above code intent, research was undertaken to examine standard fire resistance of encapsulated wood structural assemblies for use in mid-rise wood/timber buildings. One of the major differences between structural LWF assemblies used in mid-rise wood buildings (5-6 storeys) and low-rise wood buildings (= 4 stories) is the wall assemblies for the lower storeys. For mid-rise wood buildings, loadbearing wall assemblies on the lower storeys have to be designed to resist higher axial loads due to the self-weight of the upper storeys, which often result in the need for larger-size stud members and/or a greater number of studs, and higher lateral loads in case of seismic events or wind loads, which often requires the use of wood shear panels within the wall assembly. These wall assemblies very often will need to meet standard fire resistance requirements, and therefore, information regarding their standard fire-resistance ratings should be developed. This report documents the results of fullscale furnace tests conducted to develop standard fire-resistance ratings of encapsulated LWF assemblies for use in mid-rise applications.
A research project, Wood and Wood-Hybrid Midrise Buildings, was undertaken to develop information to be used as the basis for alternative/acceptable solutions for mid-rise construction using wood structural elements. As part of this project, four large-scale fire experiments were conducted to evaluate the fire performance of two forms of encapsulated combustible structural wood systems, a lightweight wood-frame (LWF) system (2 experiments [3, 4]) and a crosslaminated timber (CLT) system (1 experiment). The fourth experiment [5] involved a test structure constructed using a steel frame system described below. Each experiment involved construction of a test set-up of an unsprinklered full-size apartment unit, intended to represent a portion of a mid-rise (e.g. six-storey) building.
The structural elements used in the LWF system (wood stud walls and wood I-joist floors) and CLT system (3-ply wall panels and 5-ply floor panels) were all chosen on the basis of the types of construction that were currently being used in 5- and 6-storey mid-rise residential construction being built in the province of British Columbia, where the building code had changed earlier, in 2009, to permit such mid-rise combustible construction. This report provides the results of the experiment with an encapsulated CLT setup representing an apartment in a mid-rise (e.g. six-storey) building.
Solutions for Mid-Rise Wood Construction: Cone Calorimeter Results for Acoustic Membrane Materials Used in Floor Assemblies (Report to Research Consortium for Wood and Wood-Hybrid Mid-Rise Buildings)
A research project, Wood and Wood-Hybrid Midrise Buildings, was undertaken to develop information to be used as the basis for alternative/acceptable solutions for mid-rise construction using wood structural elements. As part of this project, three materials were selected for investigation as encapsulation materials for combustible structural elements: Type X gypsum board (12.7 mm thick and 15.9 mm thick), cement board (12.7 mm thick), and gypsum-concrete (25 mm thick and 39 mm thick). This report documents the results of cone calorimeter tests conducted to investigate the performance of the three encapsulation materials.
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