Charring Rate of Wood and Development of Cracks in the Charred Layer

The paper presents a part of research focused on the influence of cracks on the fire resistance of wooden structures and their potential integration into numerical models.The increasing interest in using wood as a sustainable construction material emphasizes the necessity of a detailed investigation of its behavior during fire exposure.Existing analyzed methods often rely on conservative charring rates under standard fire conditions, which are not remotely similar to natural fire conditions and at the same time do not describe the reality of the development of the charred layer and formation of cracks in the layer.A numerical model was developed to incorporate an equation for a more realistic charring rate based on a probabilistic approach and crack distances.This allowed the inclusion of the effect of anisotropic wood properties, moisture, density, and oxygen content, which led to a better description of the wooden structure's behavior during fire exposure.Results of the model show good consistency of the prediction with the data measured during the experiment.