QUT Engineering Professor Mahen Mahendran has won an Australian Research Council (ARC) grant to investigate the fire resistance of common pre-fabricated steel wall systems in a bid to improve building safety.

Professor Mahendran said the project was being conducted in collaboration with the National Association of Steel-Framed Housing (NASH).

It would examine the fire resistance levels of complex, high-strength Light Gauge Steel Framed (LSF) wall systems, which are being increasingly used in low and mid-rise buildings around the world, he said.

“We are seeing plasterboard-lined LSF walls being used more and more, because they are a cost-effective load-bearing wall, but that has required new wall designs, which involve complex steel stud wall configurations. The real issue is that their fire resistance is not yet fully understood,” Professor Mahendran said.

“This project aims to investigate the thermal and structural behaviour of those wall systems when they are exposed to fire, and to also develop a generic model for predicting fire resistance levels of LSF wall systems.”

The project is planned to run until June 2021 and will include full-scale fire tests at QUT’s Wind and Fire Lab and computer modelling on hundreds of potential wall system combinations.

In addition to an ARC grant of $258,778, the project is being supported by NASH with almost $100,000 in funding as well as in-kind support.