ABSTRACT
Firestopping systems are non-structural passive fire protection elements which are used to seal service penetrations through fire-rated assemblies. They are designed to restrict fire spread for durations of exposure following the standard fire test. Depending on the material used, different firestopping configurations can behave very differently even when exposed to the same heating environment. However, current understanding of fire performance of firestopping systems is based on standard fire testing, without a full appreciation of thermal behavior of the firestopping material (called firestop). As an initial assessment to identify thermophysical properties for firestop materials, this sensitivity study investigates how variations of temperature-dependent thermal property inputs affects the results of the numerical analysis in comparison to test data. The close comparison between the experimental results and numerical prediction highlights the extreme importance of gathering the right fundamental properties for fire behavior modelling.
