Literature Review

Abstract

The current review is focused on large-scale, non-standard structural fire resistance testing, with a particular emphasis on testing programs aimed at better understanding the full-structure response of real buildings in real fires. In general, the review addresses tests which have used real fires rather than testing furnaces to provide the thermal insult to the tested assembly. However, in some cases furnaces have been used to perform structural fire resistance tests which clearly fall outside the scope of standard testing procedures, and some of these have thus been included. In performing this review, more than 30 individual large scale tests have been identified since the early 1990s, although in some cases (as in the case of the Cardington steel frame tests, for instance) multiple tests were performed and are reported over a period of years in a single test structure. The following sections present brief overviews of the available tests, and identify common themes and conclusions wherever possible. The tests are categorized based on primary construction materials construction, and then chronologically.