St. Elena Primary School Sports Hall, Treviso (ph. Adriano Marangon _ MADE associati)

A significant component within sports venues is the sound-absorbing panel: Celenit panels are the result of a manufacturing process using natural raw materials: wood, cement and water. Panels are indispensable for ensuring optimal acoustic comfort, enabling speech intelligibility or otherwise providing a quieter, more relaxing environment.

Thanks to their special surface texture, wood wool panels are natural sound absorbers and ensure that noise is not completely reflected but partly absorbed and dissipated, avoiding the annoying phenomenon of excessive reverberation.

For Celenit panels, wood logs, exclusively spruce, come from sustainably managed forests: in fact, the logs are replanted immediately after being cut. The sustainability of the wood supply chain is certified by the PEFC and FSC labels on Celenit panels. The wood fibres are bound with white Portland cement.

Intervention in the gymnasium of the Scuola Media Statale Maria Maltoni,
Pontassieve (Fi) (photo: Simone Lopez _ Italsolid s.a.s.)

Protection from shattered ceiling’s  plaster fall

Dealing on this occasion with the topic of safety, ceiling solutions that offer, in addition to the necessary fire protection and impact resistance (e.g. from lobs), protection against the ceiling’s plaster fall are of particular interest.

The phenomenon of falling ceilings is particularly recurrent in buildings constructed with brick ceilings up to the 1970s/80s, and is alarming in school buildings, both in classrooms and sports halls.

Falling plaster cladding is a sudden event that, with the adoption of a Celenit ceiling, is neutralized.

In fact, Celenit acoustic ceilings offer a load resistance of more than 500 kg/sqm, certified by test reports carried out at the Giordano Institute.

Celenit ceilings, moreover, do not require any special or costly assembly tools; the use of simple, traditional metal structures and accessories, which are easy to find and install, guarantees speed and efficiency during installation as well as low material costs.

The panels that can be used in the gymnasium are Celenit AB and Celenit AB/F, the latter with increased fire protection (EI 60′) being coupled with a 15 mm thick plasterboard sheet.

Tests were carried out for both anti-deflection systems by the Giordano Institute according to rigorous laboratory methods.

A portion of the ceiling is suspended from a support structure to simulate real installation conditions. A lifting and release structure, equipped with electromagnets, has the task of releasing the falling elements (made up of suitably ballasted brick tiles) from predetermined heights.

By stressing the ceiling with an increasing dynamic load and secondly considering a single load with a 50 cm drop, at the end of the test the system does not show any significant deformation or cracking of either the suspension systems or the ceiling.

Breakthrough test sequence (photo Giordano Institute).

Resistance to ball strikes
As mentioned above, Celenit’s certified ceiling and wall solutions guarantee the suitability and stability of the cladding systems, also with regard to resistance to ball strikes, an essential requirement inside a gymnasium. Tests at the Giordano Institute laboratories follow the requirements of UNI EN 13964 standards for ceiling application, falling within the most restrictive class 1/A.

CE marking
Recalling the other reasons for guaranteeing the quality of building materials, Celenit products are CE marked according to UNI EN 13168, which specifies the requirements for wood wool products used for thermal insulation of buildings, and according to UNI EN 13964 for false ceilings.

The Giordano Institute also carried out the determination of the type product according to these standards, the initial inspection of the factory and the production control system, as well as the continuous surveillance plan, and issued the certificate of constancy of performance with regard to reaction to fire. The test laboratories carried out the determination of the type product for the other declared characteristics and issued the relevant test reports.

Regulation (EU) No 305/2011 on the CE marking of construction products obliges the manufacturer to draw up a Declaration of Performance (DoP) for products that fall within the scope of a harmonised standard or if they conform to a European Technical Assessment; Celenit makes the DoPs of each product available for download in the ‘download’ area of the website www.celenit.com.

Intervention in the G. Marzotto State Nursery School, Brescia (photo Ing. Massimo Stefano).

Reaction to fire
As far as reaction to fire is concerned, the relevant DoP indicates the reaction class according to EN 1351-1.

With the entry into force of Ministerial Decree 14.10.2022, the Fire Prevention Code has been updated. The materials and their fire behaviour are defined by the GM (material group) indicator where: GM0 indicates non-combustible materials, Euroclass A1 (class 0); GM1-GM2-GM3 are defined by tabular correspondence; and GM4 are all materials not included in the previous groups.

Celenit panels conforming to the GM1 group for exposed ceiling applications are classified in Euroclass A2-s1, d0: they do not propagate flame, do not produce smoke and do not drip.

Other certifications
The ‘durability’ of the system is referred to in UNI EN 13964 (point 4.8): ‘Ceilings must be designed to ensure that during the useful life of the ceiling, no harmful levels of water and condensation are formed within or on the ceiling surfaces and adjacent building components that could result in a loss of the bending resistance of the membrane and/or a loss of the load-bearing capacity of the entire ceiling kit or substructure.’

Celenit panels are classified, according to UNI EN 13964, in exposure class C, therefore suitable for environments with critical climatic conditions (RH up to 95% and T up to 30°C). Only Celenit AB/F is classified in exposure class A (RH 70% and T 25°C).

Finally, we would like to point out that the higher or lower concentration of pollutants in the air of a confined environment depends, among other things, on the use of construction or furnishing materials that may contain harmful substances and release them over time.

The choice of suitable materials avoids an excessive and undesirable concentration of pollution; the analysis carried out by the Giordano Institute shows concentrations after 28 days, for all the pollutants examined, well below the reference parameters, placing Celenit panels in class A+ (with reference to the classification according to French decree no. 321/2011).

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