The First International Conference on Fire and Blast has brought together researchers and practitioners from the fire and blast fields. Fire is a common scenario after an explosion occurs. Consequently the constructions are highly damaged previous to the fire exposure. Nevertheless not so much work is being done to link these two phenomena and study the effect of fire on an already damaged structure. The resilience of building constructions to multi-hazards is a topic that needs further research.
Blanca attended this conference to present the paper “Experimental and Thermal Analysis of Wall Assemblies Exposed to Standard and Parametric Fires”. The aim of the study was to assess the effect that different fire exposures have on Gypsum Plasterboard wall assemblies. For that purpose, fire rated walls were exposed to standard fires (ISO and HCC) and a heptane pool fire. Additionally thermal modelling was performed in one of the walls to study the suitability of empirical properties to model other more severe exposures.
Blanca Andres, Maria Mendoza, Serdar Selamet, Demos Demosthenous, Marcus Achenbach, Thomas Gernay, Susan Lamont and Asif Usmani in the gala dinner
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement n° 316991