American Wood Council releases new fire design specification
The American Wood Council recently released a new publication for fire design of wood members, assemblies, and connections to meet code requirements.
Since 2001, the National Design Specification for Wood Construction has provided provisions for the structural design of unprotected wood members exposed to a standardized ASTM E119 fire exposure. The 2021 Fire Design Specification for Wood Construction (FDS) contains these provisions, and also provides calculation procedures to address the added fire resistance and thermal benefits of protection provided by additional wood cover, gypsum panel products, and insulation.
The additional calculation provisions have been developed to provide standardized methods of calculating thermal separation and burn-through requirements as required in ASTM E119 and as provided in AWC’s Technical Report 10: Calculating the Fire Resistance of Exposed and Protected Wood Members (TR10).
The 2021 Fire Design Specification for Wood Construction (FDS) is available for free download on the AWC website: awc.org/codes-standards/