Development of a European approach to assess the fire performance of facades

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The objective of this project was to address a request from the Standing Committee of Construction (SCC) to provide EC Member States regulators with a means to regulate the fire performance of façade systems based on a European approach agreed by SCC

In addressing this objective, the project team was asked to consider a number of issues which are presented and discussed in this report

The initial stages of this project were focused on:

- establishing a register of the regulatory requirements in all Member States in relation to the fire performance of façade systems, and

- to identify those Member States who have regulatory requirements for the fire performance façade systems which go beyond the current EN 13501 (reaction to fire and fire resistance) classification systems and to collate the details of these additional requirements.

Having confirmed the regulatory needs in the member states, as established by the SCC, the report goes on to present:

- a testing and classification methodology based on BS 8414 - Fire performance of external cladding systems series and DIN 4102-20 - Fire behaviour of building materials and building components - Part 20: Complementary verification for the assessment of the fire behaviour of external wall claddings to address the identified key performance and classification characteristics - a verification and validation proposal, in the form of a round robin programme to support the development of the proposed testing and classification methodology. - an alternative test method which was developed on the basis of the comments from stakeholders during the project - a summary of comments received during the project.

This report presents the research methodology and the results obtained as well as discussions on how and why certain choices have been made on the development of a European assessment procedure for the fire performance of façades in response to EU Tender ref 531/PP/GRO/IMA/16/1133/9108 based on the BS 8414 – Fire performance of external cladding systems series and DIN 4102-20 – Fire behavior of building components – Part 20: Complimentary verification for the assessment of the fire behavior of external wall claddings.

Ed.