Behaviour of Double Glazing in Corner Fires

Abstract

The results of fifteen experiments in which a double glazing assembly was exposed to enclosure fires of increasing severity are presented. The glazing assembly was exposed to the typical two zone or one zone fire enclosure environment with consistency and repeatability within each set of three experiments conducted at each severity level, evident from the enclosure gas temperature profiles. The results presented include; enclosure local gas temperatures, local exposed glass surface temperatures, local shaded glass temperatures, total incident fluxes, convective and radiative fluxes, incident flux distributions at time of first cracking and inner and outer pane behaviours. A simple lumped model approach is developed to predict the response of the glazing to thermal insult. Total loss of glazing integrity is related graphically to the time of first crack.