Fire resistance testing of fire doors

Abstract

Fire-resistant doors are widely used as part of passive fire protection systems, preventing the spread of fire and smoke beyond the fire compartment. Fire resistance is usually determined through standard fire tests in accredited laboratories, such as the Laboratory for thermal technique and fire protection in Institute IMS, Serbia. Current regulations in Serbia allow testing of fire doors according to two standards: Serbian national SRPS U.J1.160 [1] and European SRPS EN 1634-1 [2]. In the past five years, 236 samples of different fire doors were tested. Most of them were single-leaf, steel doors. Although almost one third (31%) of all samples (tested on 15, 20, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, 180, 240 and 380 minutes) provided fire resistance of 120 minutes, which should be sufficient for the safe evacuation of people, as well as the protection of expensive equipment (hospitals, rooms with electrical devices, etc.).Samples usually fail the test when sustained flaming occurs on the unexposed side in the upper corner of the specimen (lock side), or when the temperature measured by thermocouples exceeds the limitation given in the standard, usually at the top corner (lock side).In this paper, both currently valid standard testing procedures are analysed and compared.