Performance of partition walls between attached residential units: airtightness, fire and acoustical testing
Bibliographic record
Abstract
phase 1 of this study, six (6) party-wall specimens were tested on the airtight of partitions between adjacent residential units’ project. The selected six specimens were defined to reflect current industry practices of partywalls construction among Canadian homebuilders. Following up on project phase 1 outcomes, the present report summarizes phase 2 results of the project. For the phase 2, future code requirements, it was determined to continue with several other alternatives for airtightness testing using a spun-bonded polyolefin (SBPO) membrane as an air barrier (AB) within double wood stud partition wall specimens. As the use of the SBPO represents a novel approach in partition wall construction, it was desired by the project collaborators, Canadian Home Builders Association (CHBA), to evaluate fire performance as well as acoustical performance of such assemblies. The following double wood stud wall specimens were examined: Airtightness test 1. with 2 unsealed spun-bonded polyolefin (SBPO) membranes (AB) behind drywall 2. with 2 sealed SBPO membranes (AB) behind drywall. 3. with 2 sealed SBPO membranes (AB) behind drywall with penetrations from nails and screws. 4. with airtight drywall AB. 5. with airtight drywall AB with penetrations from nails and screws. 6. with 2 sealed Polyethylene (PE) membranes (AB) behind drywall. 7. with 2 sealed PE membranes (AB) behind drywalls with penetrations from nails and screws. Fire resistance test F1. with 2 unsealed SBPO membranes (AB) behind drywall. F2. with 2 sealed SBPO membranes (AB) behind drywall. Acoustic test A1. with 2 unsealed SBPO membranes (AB) behind drywall, A2. with 2 sealed SBPO membranes (AB) behind drywall. The airtightness test results show that the use of membrane AB systems (both, SBPO and PE) increases airtightness very effectively (air flow rates as low as 0.005 L/(m2·s)) and screw and nail penetrations do not affect the airtightness significantly. The air flow rate of the specimen with airtight drywall approach was higher: 0.116 L/(m2·s) and the effect of fastener penetrations was considerable: the value increased to 0.136 L/(m2·s). Fire resistance test results show a slight difference in the time till failure: 75 minutes and 72 minutes for sealed and unsealed SBPO membrane respectively, both with identical structural failure. Similarly, acoustic test results show a slight difference between the two specimens: Sound Transmission Class STC51 and STC49 for sealed and unsealed SBPO membrane respectively.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".