Inspection and Investigation on the Recent Fire Building Façades in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA)

Abstract

Many of fabrication materials which used today in commercial façade systems assemblies to improve energy performance and provide an aesthetic to those buildings. The various grades of building facades materials used make exterior walls fires are the most common topic in fire safety field nowadays. Moreover, Grenfell disaster in 2017 has been instigating and modification of fire building regulations and fire tests around the world. In kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), recent fires in several façade buildings have had international, on going press covering such as Haramain train station in Jeddah, KSA which was built with a cost approximately £5.5bn which was engulfed by a fire in 2019. Building regulations and code compliance document cycle have been reviewed in this paper. The Saudi Building Code ( SBC 2018 ) which was derived from International Building code (IBC) is the main code in the country which demands for full scale test meet with NFPA 285 or alternatives paths for buildings below 23 meter height. However, when the exterior wall cladding material is Aluminium Composite Panel, there another technical regulation standard entitled SASO-2752 which was issued in 2019 by the Saudi Standards, Metrology and Quality (SASO). This standard classifies panels only based on small scale fire test. Such discrepancy in building regulations led to misunderstood and mistakes when ACP used to clad the building. Moreover, the authority that should enforce to apply SBC has been fluctuating between Civil and (MOMRA). This conflict loses the importance of supervision and control the building façade from the beginning of construction. The installation method for those panels indicated that the provision of cavity barrier was missing in the fire case study and most other buildings. This paper aimed also to discuss and identify the flammability of building façade materials by aiding of Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA) and Mass Loss Rate Calorimeter (MLRC) ISO 13927. Aluminium Composite Panel (ACP) sample taken from a building burned in 2018 which was cladding the exterior wall of that building are used in the lab experiment to determine temperature of mass loss rate by TGA and the flammability of the material under MLCR. As a result, the material showed poor fire resistance.