Assessing the Fire Integrity Performance of Cross-Laminated Timber Floor Panel-to-Panel Joints

During the past few years, a relatively new technology has emerged in North America and changed the way professionals design and build wood structures: Cross-laminated Timber (CLT). CLT panels are manufactured in width ranging from 600 mm to 3 m. As such, fastening them together along their major strength axis is required in order to form a singular structural assembly resisting to in-plane and out-of-plane loading. Typical panel-to-panel joint details of CLT assemblies may consist of internal spline(s), single or double surface splines or half-lapped joints. These tightly fitted joint profiles should provide sufficient fire-resistance, but have yet to be properly evaluated for fire-resistance in CLT assemblies. The experimental portion of the study consisted at conducting ten (10) intermediate-scale fire-resistance tests of four (4) types of CLT panel-to-panel joint and three (3) CLT thicknesses. The data generated from the intermediate-scale fire tests were used to validate a finite element heat transfer model, a coupled thermal-structural model and a simplified analytical model. The simplified analytical model presented in this thesis is an easy-to-use design procedure for evaluating the fire integrity resistance of four commonly-used CLT panel-to-panel joint details and could potentially be implemented into building codes and design standards. Based on the test data and models developed in this study, joint coefficient values were derived for the four (4) types of CLT panel-to-panel joint details. Joint coefficients are required when assessing the fire integrity of joints using simple analytical models, such as Eurocode 5: Part 1-2. The contribution of this study is to increase the knowledge of CLT exposed to fire and to facilitate its use in Canada and US by complementing current fire-resistance design methodologies of CLT assemblies, namely with respect to the fire integrity criterion. Being used as floor and wall assemblies, designers should be capable to accurately verify both the load-bearing and separating functions of CLT assemblies in accordance with fire-related provisions of the building codes, which is now feasible based on the findings of this study.