Modelling heat transfer of timber sections subjected to non-standard fire action

Using timber as a structural material in buildings is promising in reducing the carbon footprint of construction, although fire safety has been a long-standing challenge prohibiting its wider use. The current design practice usually complies with Eurocode 5, but it is largely prescribed only for standard fire scenario. While investigating the fire behavior in real compartments containing timber members, the fire action imposed on the surface of timber members can be hardly represented by the standard fire curve. Therefore, modelling the heat transfer of timber sections in these real fire scenarios requires adequate numerical models. In this paper, the heat transfer model equipped with temperature-variant thermal properties of timber as well as a heat generation model addressing timber combustion effect, has been developed and implemented in the open-source simulation platform OpenSees for fire. Advancing from the existing heat transfer models, the present model has been validated against test results of timber sections subjected to the prescribed non-standard fire actions supported by the e-controlled radiant panel system. The modelling results have shown good performance in predicting the temperature evolution at various depths of the timber sections subjected to non-standard heating conditions.