Multiphysics Modelling of Stone Wool Fire Resistance

Abstract In fire resistance tests, stone wool’s organic matter undergoes exothermic oxidative reactions sustained by external heat, causing mass transfer in the structure. The previous modelling attempts, lacking the mass transfer physics, fall short in predicting the temperature of high density and high organic content samples. To fill this gap in the fire engineering modelling capability, we include mass transfer in our calculation, and validate the model using experimental fire resistance data. As an alternative, we use a heat conduction -based model lacking the gas transfer but with reaction kinetics coupled to the stone wool’s organic mass %. The results show that the thermal effects of the oxidative degradation can be predicted by introducing the simplified diffusion processes. The oxygen transfer and exothermic reactions depend upon the amount of organic content, and the uncertainty of temperature predictions is $$\pm \,20\%$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>±</mml:mo> <mml:mspace/> <mml:mn>20</mml:mn> <mml:mo>%</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> . In average, temperatures and critical times are more accurately predicted by the heat conduction model, while, the peak temperature prediction uncertainty is low ( $$\pm \,10\%$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>±</mml:mo> <mml:mspace/> <mml:mn>10</mml:mn> <mml:mo>%</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> ) with the multiphysics model. The uncertainty compensation method reduces the difference between the two model predictions. Nevertheless, further validation study is needed to generalize the uncertainty compensation metrics. Finally, we demonstrate how a gas flow barrier on the cold side (sandwich) can effectively reduce the peak temperature of the high organic content-stone wools.