Masonry Magazine April 1975 Page. 13
BIA Technical Notes
on Brick Construction
Brick Institute of America 1750 Old Meadow Road, Mclean, Virginia 22101
FIRE RESISTANCE
16
REVISED
Oct.
1974
INTRODUCTION
Provisions relating to fire safety represent the most important regulations of every building code, so far as the safety of the public is concerned. In contrast with the few structural failures that occur, fire collects a heavy toll of lives and a high loss of dollars every year.
The performance of walls, columns, floors and other building members under fire conditions is of major importance to fire safety. However, these single elements are only part of the code requirement. It is also important for the code to provide for a balance between fire ratings of members and other provisions of equal importance, such as exit facilities, floor area limitations, separation minimums and height limitations.
This Technical Notes discusses the fire test procedure used for brick masonry walls and lists the fire ratings of brick masonry walls and fire protection ratings for beams and columns. Technical Notes 16A discusses the other parameters of building design which are important for consideration of total fire hazard in buildings.
FIRE RESISTANCE RATINGS
It has become standard practice to express the degree of fire resistance required for any member in terms of its ability to withstand exposure to fire as prescribed by the American Society for Testing and Materials' Standard Methods of Fire Tests of Building Construction and Materials, E 119.
This standard test, along with other ASTM fire test standards such as E 84, does not measure the fire hazard in terms of actual performance in a real fire situation. The standard does, however, give a comparison of the measure of performance between assemblies tested under similar conditions.
Specifications in this test provide that the temperature on the exposed (fire) side of the test panel shall be controlled by the standard time-temperature curve, as shown in Fig. 1. The points on this curve that determine its character are:
1000 F (538 C) at 5 min
1300 F (704 C) at 10 min
1550 F (843 C) at 30 min
1770 F (966 C) at 1 hr
1850 F (1010 C) at 2 hr
2000 F (1093 C) at 4 hr
2300 F (1260 C) at 8 hr
WALL SPECIMENS
The area exposed to fire shall be at least 100 sq ft (9 m²) with no dimension less than 9 ft (2.7 m). Non-bearing walls and partitions are restrained at all four sides, but bearing walls and partitions are not restrained at the vertical edges. (See Fig. 2.)