Assessment of a model development for window glass breakage due to fire exposure in a field model

This paper presents a model development for the prediction of window glass breakage and fallout in a field model. Glass breakage is based on the temperature difference and the allowable glass breaking stress; and glass fallout is determined by a preset number of successive breakages. As a validation, generally good agreements are obtained between the numerical predictions and the data from a compartment fire experiment. The predicted glass surface temperature and the adjacent gas temperature are within 10–25% of the test data. For fire sizes of 170, 280 and 390 kW, the time of initial occurrence of glass breakage are shown within reasonable range of the experimental results. For the 680 kW fire case, the model shows an earlier glass fallout time, however, the predicted glass temperature at fallout is around 450 °C and is consistent with previous experiments. Further research to improve the model is discussed such as on radiation modeling and the criteria of glass breakage and fallout.