Engineered timber is on a trajectory to become the construction material of the future. However, on that pathway there stands the fire issue. Wood burns, it is inevitable. This is something we must accept, and learn to work around. Common approach – determination of a char profile and the “healthy” section has its limitations, especially when applied to CLT products in which one could expect the glue line failure. And all of this is the topic of my todays discussion with Dr Danny Hopkin of OFR Consultants. Danny did his PhD on the subject of timber in fire and has participated in multiple interesting research projects on this topic. He is currently working with the Structural Timber Association on a STA-SIG CLT project on unravelling the fire behaviour of CLT, with its experimental part carried at the ITB in Poland.

If you would like to learn more about the STA-SIG CLT project, please visit the project website at:
https://www.structuraltimber.co.uk/sectors/clt-special-interest-group

Or read the introduction to the project by Dr Danny Hopkin.

Very quick and critical reading material:
STA-SIG CLT group - Compliance Road-map for the Structural Fire Safety Design of Mass Timber Buildings in England
A. Law - Burnout means burnout

Connect with Dr Danny Hopkin at:
https://twitter.com/DannyHopkin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dannyjhopkin/
[email protected]

--- Useful links ---

This talk was a goldmine of resources, and here are all of them (I hope I did not miss out on something!)

Ronquillo G., Hopkin D., Spearpoint M., Review of large-scale fire tests on cross-laminated timber
Hopkin D., Anatsasov S., Brandon D., Reviewing the veracity of a zone-model-based-approach for the assessment of enclosures formed of exposed CLT
Hopkin D., Schmid J., Friquin K.L. Timber structures subject to non-standard fire exposure - Advances & challenges

Wegrzynski W. et al., The discrepancies in energy balance in furnace testing, a bug or a feature?

CROSS UK Cross-laminated timber (CLT) in multi-storey buildings
CROSS UK The risk of collapse of multi-storey CLT buildings during a fire
Angus Law and Luke Bisby, The rise and rise of fire resistance, Fire Safety Journal
We need to talk about timber - Angus Law gives the lecture for IStructE
Angus Law and Rory Hadden - We need to talk about timber

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