Improvements in Predictions for Steel Fire Doors Subjected to the Fire Endurance Test

Abstract

Fire doors are subjected to fire standards tests as a means of evaluating fire resistance. However, the complexity of the heat transfer and resulting property changes over the wide temperature range makes it a challenge for manufacturers to predict how the fire doors will perform. To help advance the use of modeling tools to provide product performance insight, UL started an intensive research program to collect data and use it to validate FEA-based predictions of the thermal and mechanical responses of steel double fire doors exposed to high temperatures. The models included the necessary complexity of the product and test setup along with temperature dependency of the constituent materials over the temperature of the test to help provide helpful predictions for manufacturers. In this paper, we provide a preview of the some of the model results