Creation of Equipment for Testing Roofs for Resistance to External Fire Influence

This paper examines and analyzes the domestic and foreign regulatory framework, guidelines and technical documents, information brochures, manuals, handbooks, test reports and other literary sources as well as information on the Internet. In the countries of the European space, fire safety requirements have been established for roofs and roofing materials, both for roofing materials and for roofs as part of structures, which helps to limit the spread of fire in buildings and structures during a fire. It has been proven that there is a need to create equipment for testing resistance to external fire exposure in accordance with DSTU CEN/TS 1187:2016 (method 2) of coverings of buildings (roofs) and establishing fire classification according to DSTU EN 13501-5:2016. A registration certificate, a technical description, an operating manual, and a program and methodology of the test bench verification have been developed. The initial verification of the test bench was carried out and it was put into operation. Approbation of the test method was carried out on the created test bench through experimental studies of five types of roofing materials being widely used on construction works in Ukraine using two bases (substrates) of combustible and non-combustible materials at air flow speeds of 2 m/s and 4 m/s above the specimen surface. According to the results of this work, it was established that the maximum relative deviation of the result of measuring the length of the damaged (charred) part of the specimens was in the range of 1.2 % to 23.3 % for the roof and 0.7 % to 27.5 % for the base.