Simplified correlations of gypsum board thermal properties for simulation tools

The current work proposes for the first time an integrated set of simplified correlations for the thermal properties, i.e.effective thermal conductivity, effective specific heat and effective density, of commercial gypsum boards as a function of temperature that can be easily incorporated in dedicated computational tools in order to simulate the fire behavior of a gypsum board. The proposed correlations are based on experimental data purposely performed in the frame of this work, as well as on literature experimental data and theoretical approximations. The applicability and the accuracy of the correlations are established by simulating the fire behavior of various types of gypsum boards exposed to different fire conditions. For the validation of the developed correlations, an in-house developed code is utilized, taking into account thermal properties produced by the proposed correlations. The predictions are compared with two published sets of experimental data, as well as with one experimental data set performed in the current work. The results indicate that the proposed correlations can be reliably utilized in computational tools in order to accurately predict the fire behavior of commercial gypsum boards. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.