Fire Safety of Apartment Buildings Fabricated from Glued Sandwich Panels Compared with the more Frequently Used Structural Systems

At present, the trend in new building techniques is to move towards light construction systems, and efforts are also being made to use such techniques with multi-storey buildings. It is a characteristic of the Light Building construction system that a substantial part of the structure of a building is made up of thermal insulation, and heavy and wet processes are eliminated. The article focuses on the options for the use of a specific new technique which utilizes the advantages of large-format construction panels composed of 15 mm thick wood chipboard cladding glued using a polyurethane adhesive directly onto rigid thermal insulation, which is most frequently made from façade polystyrene. No other reinforcement is used. The consistency and load-bearing capacity of the panels are exclusively provided by the gluing of the insulation to the cladding using a polyurethane adhesive. The contribution focuses on the prospects for the use of this interesting technique from the aspect of the fire safety of apartment buildings; so far it has only been used for family homes. The contribution also contains a comparison of construction-related technical and financial indicators of use of this technique with standard construction systems employed for timber structures and also with traditional ceramic masonry from the viewpoint of the fire resistance of individual structures.