The setting for the Tisova fire tests could not be more
picturesque, cool crisp winter days near a river in the western province of
Carlsbad, on an old coal processing site. Over the past week you would have
found a small band of academics making holes in floors, ceilings, walls, and
beams in one of the buildings located on this site 25 minutes to the west of
Karlovy Vary (where we are staying). Whilst
this is a lot of fun, it is all in the name of research.
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| Karlovy Vary at night from our apartment |
The aim:
To understand the structural effects of a travelling fire on
concrete and composite structures, both during the fire and residually after
the fire has cooled back to ambient. We are aiming to run the test on the 28th
of January.
Who’s involved:
University of Edinburgh, Technical Research Institute of
Sweden (SP), Imperial College London, CSTB, Lulea Technical University, Czech Technical
University in Ostrava, MajaCzech, and the Fire and Rescue service of the Karlovy
Vary region.
When did we start:
Set-up on site started on the 13th of January
with two members from SP (David Lange and Fredrik Kahl) marking out holes for
instrumentation and setting up the lighting for working into the evenings. Jamie Maclean and I (David Rush) arrived on site
on the 14th of January having set-off from Edinburgh on the 12th
with a van full of equipment.
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| The test building |
What have we done so far:
The first week has been mainly drilling holes through the
concrete and composite slabs for the 60 plate thermometers, drilling into the
concrete and composite slab at various depths to place 112
thermocouples, and installing the 56 thermocouple trees in the fire compartment. On top of this we have taken out the internal
steel partitions that were in the fire compartment, made many holes in the
plasterboard partitions on the floor above the fire compartment to run cables
to the data loggers, broken a sledge hammer trying to break through a bathroom
floor and created a lot of additional dust.
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| Thermocouple trees inside fire compartment (Photo credit Dave Lange) |
Trials and tribulations:
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| Jamie Maclean and drill |
So far there have been few trials to speak of, the only two
of note are locating the troughs in the composite slab so that we can accurately
measure temperatures, and a delay in the wood supply due to the time that its
taking to dry it.
What’s next:
Over the next week the numbers on site will swell to around
10, meaning that we can start hooking up the 700 or so measurement channels,
placing the wood (when it arrives), protecting
the necessary cabling in the fire compartment, and install the remaining
thermocouples and deflection gauges
Highlights:
Globus is a big positive for us with tasty sandwiches,
coffees, and pastries that keep us full of energy for the long days on
site. Finding drill bits long enough to
drill 650mm into a concrete beam from above, which we wouldn’t have found had
it not been for the very helpful and patient English speaking lady at the local
hardware store, which we have visited everyday so far with random lists of equipment
that we need.
(Photos copyright of David Rush)
