1. Introduction
Commercial gypsum boards are widely used in the building
industry as facing materials for walls and ceilings due to their very
good mechanical and thermal properties, as well as fire endurance.
The endothermic dehydration process that takes place at high
temperatures is capable of slowing down the fire spread through
gypsum board based systems. From the fire safety point of view,
gypsum dehydration can be of greatimportance, allowing sufficient
building evacuation times.
Several computational efforts have been made in the pastto predict
the thermal behavior of gypsum boards under fire conditions.
They revealed the significance of using appropriate physical properties
for simulating the temperature evolution inside a gypsum
board when exposed to fire conditions [1–6]. Depending on the
composition of the gypsum board, the reactivity of the characteristic
endothermic and/or exothermic reactions may vary. In addition,
the behavior of the material under fire conditions is affected by