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) and a crosslaminated timber (CLT) system (1 experiment). The fourth experiment 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 intent was to provide the opportunity for comparison of the fire performance of the encapsulated LWF and CLT systems to that of the LSF system. However, after the initial 15 min, there were differences in the fire conditions within the apartment in the test of the LSF system that made this comparison difficult.
This report provides the results of the second test with an encapsulated LWF setup representing an apartment in a mid-rise (e.g. six-storey) building.
