The natural fire safety concept - full-scale tests at Cardington

As part of a European collaborative programme of research, the UK's Building Research Establishment has carried out a series of eight full-scale fire tests in a purpose-built compartment at Cardington in the United Kingdom. The work is in support of the development of the ECSC programme Natural Fire Safety Concept, Full Scale Tests, Implementation in the Eurocodes, and Development of a Userfriendly Design Tool. This test programme is distinct from the collaborative fire test programme carried out on the steel-framed building at Cardington to study the structural response of a building to fire. The tests have been undertaken in a compartment with overall dimensions of 12 m x 12 m. The parameters considered in the tests have been defined from a consideration of the limitations of the current parametric approach adopted in Annex B of the ENV version of Eurocode 1.2 [1] and from the requirement to validate the program OZONE developed in the scope of a complementary research project. The tests have investigated the influence of compartment linings, fire load type and through draft condition on the severity of fully developed, post-flashover fires. Fire development in the pre-flashover phase and smoke movement are not considered in this programme although complementary tests carried out by the other partners to the research have investigated these aspects of fire behaviour. The objectives of the research are to gather high-quality data on the behaviour of post-flashover fires in realistic compartments and to use this information to validate the natural fire safety concept. This paper considers the predictive methods for determining the parametric temperature-time response in the Eurocode in the light of comparisons with the test results. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.