Experimental study on vertical fire spread along a wooden façade

The main purpose of these tests is to get some information on fire spread along a combustible façade in order to assess the ability of numerical codes [1] to simulate flame propagation. Many authors have already studied compartment fire with external flames for non-combustible façades [2,3,4] and also combustible façades [5,6]. Studies on non-combustible façade allow to describe flames (flame depth, flame height, thermal actions, etc.) and to explain the influence of geometrical parameters (opening dimensions, “U” configuration, etc.) on flame shape and flame behaviour. These studies highlight the importance of some of these parameters on vertical spread and correlations are issued from these experimental studies. If many researches on combustible façades exist, it is difficult to find academic configurations with a large instrumentation and generally, these studies focus on a facade system involving complex combustible materials (insulation or composite). That's why it was decided to perform some large scale tests to study fire spread along a vertical wood wall