We participated in the development of the fire balcony

Scientists from UCEEB and the Faculty of Civil Engineering of CTU Prague evaluated the structural design of the steel balcony manufactured by PEKSTRA in terms of its expected behaviour under high temperature stress during a fire using advanced design methods. Based on the results of the simulations, the client first improved the structural design of the balcony and then successfully verified its properties in a large-scale fire test.

For more than thirty years, the Třeboň-based company PEKSTRA has been manufacturing suspended balconies and self-supporting loggias for prefabricated and apartment buildings, which, in addition to their main purpose, often also serve as a firebreak designed to limit the spread of fire along the building facade. Therefore, our research team Fire Safety also participated in the evaluation of their structural design in cooperation with experts from the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague.

First of all, together with the client, we determined that the balcony would be developed for shielding thermal effects during a fire in an apartment, because the most frequent outlet for PEKSTRA products is the reconstruction of apartment buildings. We then selected a typical balcony element and a suitable fire scenario based on the typology of the building on which the balcony is most often installed.

We modelled the specific fire scenario in a CFD program (specifically Fire Dynamics Simulation) to determine the temperature field on the balcony. In collaboration with the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the CTU, we then performed a material analysis by simulating the heating of its structural elements. Based on the results of the computer simulations, we improved the structural design of the balcony with the contracting company, which then successfully passed a large-scale fire test at the PAVUS testing facility in Veselí nad Lužnicí.