JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #108 - October 2016 - 46

SOLUTIONS construction

University of Valencia EDEM refurbished
with an all-composite cladding system
As part of a major expansion of the EDEM Business School, three harbour
buildings that were formerly part of the Port of Valencia have been combined, redesigned and totally refurbished inside and out, with a modern
new façade manufactured from a fire-rated all-composite system.
neil Gray,
Global Business Manager,
Crestapol resins Adhesives & Advanced
Composites Business,
Scott Bader Co Ltd.

Lightweight
composite system

riginally founded in 1499,
the University of Valencia, located in the ancient
coastal city on the Mediterranean Sea, is a thriving institution
with three campuses where elegant 15th century architecture
blends with more modern buildings. The EDEM Escuela de
Empresarios Business School,
affiliated with the university, is
a private non-profit foundation
set up in 2002 to support the
business sector training future
business leaders, executives and
entrepreneurs in the Valencian
region.

The new EDEM building, which
was officially opened in September 2015 in time for the new
academic year, was designed
by the Spanish architect D. Jose
Marti, principal architect of R
Studio Arquitectura, based locally in Valencia. Marti's design
vision has created a modern
new learning and study environment, with open spaces, natural
light and panoramic waterfront
views across the harbour. The
impressive new 7000m² façade,
which covers the entire length
of the original three buildings,
is constructed from a lightweight composite system using

Scott Bader's Crestapol® 1212
high-performance acrylic resin for all parts. The new façade
comprises 15,000 metres of FRP
pultruded profiles and 2050
moulded parts with 100 different shape and size combinations.
Each composite part had to pass
the EN UNE 13501-1 Cs2d0
fire standard. The new exterior
building design has areas with
traditional flat wall panel cladding, but is largely made up of
elliptical-shaped slats in front
of the new expanse of floor to
ceiling windows. The horizontal
and vertical composite slating
system used in different sections
of the new façade gives a "shutter-like" appearance, providing
both natural daylight and shade
and thus preventing the building from overheating during the
very hot summer months.

EN fire rating

Fig. 1: The impressive new 7,000m² façade covers the entire length of the original
three buildings

jec composites magazine / No108 October 2016

The European standard EN
13501-1: Reaction to Fire provides a number of performance
criteria to measure the fire characteristics of building products.
These cover flame spread and
contribution to fire, as well as
smoke generation and the production of burning droplets. The
EN UNE 13501-1 Cs2d0 fire

rating level is a demanding one
for exterior building parts, where
s2 only allows medium smoke
generation, and d0 requires no
material droplets within 600 seconds. To achieve this stipulated
EN rating for each of the moulded and pultruded parts used
in the façade design, extensive
production trials and fire tests
were carried out on a number of
fire-retardant (FR) resin systems
currently available. Miraplas
concluded from these trials that
only Scott Bader's Crestapol®
1212 high-performance acrylic
resin had the performance properties and processing flexibility
to be cost effectively used for all
of the different manufacturing
methods. A critical factor was
the high filler loading of 170 phr
by weight of alumina trihydrate
(ATH) needed to pass the EN
UNE 13501 fire specification.
As such, Crestapol 1212 was
specified and used to produce
all of the 2050 moulded parts
as well as the 15,000 metres of
GRP pultruded profiles needed
for the EDEM building façade.

Multiple
production processes
Miraplas S.L. produced all the
moulded components for the

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #108 - October 2016