Fire Safety of CLT Buildings in New Zealand and Australia

Authors

  • Andrew H Buchanan SWST
  • Andrew Dunn
  • James O'Neill
  • Dennis Pau

Keywords:

Fire, CLT, cross laminated timber, buildings, regulations, codes, Australia, New Zealand

Abstract

This article summarizes the design procedures for ensuring fire safety in cross laminated timber (CLT) buildings in Australia and New Zealand, with reference to the Building Codes in both countries. New Zealand and Australia are located close together geographically and have similarities in some areas of building control, but prescriptive code requirements are often very different. There is a small but growing local CLT industry, but CLT materials for large projects are imported from Europe.

References

Buchanan AH, Abu AK (2017) Structural design for fire

safety, 2nd Ed. John Wiley & Sons, UK.

CEN (2004) Eurocode 5: Design of timber structures—Part

-2: General – Structural fire design. EN 1995-1-2. European

Committee for Standardization, Brussels, Belgium.

DBH (2012) Extract from the New Zealand building code:

Clauses C1-C6 protection from fire, clause A3 building

importance levels. Department of Building and Housing.

MBIE (2014) C/VM2. Verification method: Framework for

fire safety design, for New Zealand building code clauses

C1-C6 protection from fire. Ministry of Business, Innovation

and Employment.

MBIE (2016) C/AS1-7. Acceptable solution for buildings,

for New Zealand building code clauses C1-C6 protection

from fire. Ministry of Business, Innovation and

Employment.

SA (2006) AS 1720.4 - 2006. Timber structures, part 4: Fire

resistance for structural adequacy of timber elements.

Standards Australia.

SA (2014) AS 1720.1 - 2006. Timber structures, part 1:

Design methods. Standards Australia.

SA (2017) AS/NZS 1720.4 - 2017. Timber structures, part 4:

Fire resistance of timber elements. Draft for public comment.

Standards Australia.

SNZ (2007) NZS 3603:1993, with amendments 1 to 4.

Timber structures standard. Standards New Zealand,

Wellington, New Zealand.

SNZ (2017) NZS/AS 1720. Timber structures standard. Draft

for public comment. Standards New Zealand, Wellington,

New Zealand.

XLam (2017) Designing with XLam laminated timber. Fire

design guide. www.xlam.co.nz.

Downloads

Published

2018-08-16

Issue

Section

Research Contributions