EU FIRE TESTS

Introduction
Each Member State within the EU has historically developed it's own fire tests. However, the result from each test have not been comparable across national borders. For this reason new harmonised tests, used in all EU countries, have been adopted.

The new harmonised classification systems for declaring the performance in fire of construction products, elements of construction and fire protection systems, rely on the implementation of a wide variety of fire tests.

These fire tests are designed to represent the way in which an installed product would perform, and provide results that can be compared, from one product to another, in a consistent manner throughout the EU. The results in time [minutes] do not necessarily represent the actual time that a construction element or fire protection system will function satisfactorily in a real fire.

Classification Systems
Some of these tests are used to determine the Reaction to Fire Classification of performance in fire of a product. Others support the Resistance to Fire Classification of performance in fire of an element of construction or a fire protection system.

Fire Tests

Reaction to Fire tests tell us how a product will become involved in the growth of fire in the room of origin, up to the time when flashover occurs, or does not occur. The data from the selected small /intermediate test methods has been correlated to data arising from more expensive larger test methods, see EU Large-scale Reference Fire Tests.

The Reaction to Fire tests have been selected so that, in combination, they allow us to rank products from the best performing Euroclass A1 to the poorest Euroclass E or F. The various combinations of tests have been selected so that results from the smaller-sized tests correlate with data from the larger, more expensive, full-scale tests that have been deemed to represent real fires. Some of these EU fire tests are completely new, others have been adopted for EU use from elsewhere.

Resistance to Fire tests tell us how an element of construction or fire protection system will inhibit a fully developed fire from causing structural collapse of the element, or prevent the fire from passing from the room of origin into an adjacent room, corridor or other space.

Resistance to Fire tests have, in the main, been designed to reflect the particular uses of elements of construction, allowing comparison throughout the EU, without undue change to established experience. However, the new tests are expected to be a little more severe than those previously used in the UK.