- Author
-
Hui, M. C.
- Title
- Performance-Based Design to Protect the Unprotected. BFRL Fire Research Seminar. VHS Video.
- Coporate
- Warrington Fire Research, Victoria, Australia
- Report
-
Video,
June 19, 2001,
- Book or Conf
- Engineered Fire Protection Design...Applying Fire Science to Fire Protection Problems, International Conference. Proceedings. Co-organized by: Society of Fire Protection Engieners (SFPE) and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). June 11-15, 2001,
San Francisco, CA,
388-399 p.,
2001
- Keywords
-
smoke control
|
multistory building
|
fire protection
|
occupants
|
corridors
|
pressurisation
|
escape means
- Abstract
- It has been established that smoke is the primary cause of death and injuries in fires. To alleviate the risk to occupants in high-rise buildings, it is typical to pressurise the stairways so as to maintain a tenable environment in the means of egress during the time required for evacuation, in addition to providing conditions that will assist emergency response personnel to conduct search and rescue operations and to locate and control the fire. It is also common to provide a zoned smoke control system to minimise the spread of smoke through minor openings and construction cracks between floors. The objective of the combined stair pressurisation and zoned smoke control system is to provide occupants on the non-fire-affected floors with a tenable environment to allow them to evacuate to an open space. Nevertheless, with a zoned smoke control system, the concentration of smoke on the fire floor might render it untenable. Accordingly, the basis for the design of zoned smoke control systems is that building occupants should evacuate the fire floor as soon as possible after fire detection. Human behaviour research has shown that there could be a significant delay on the time of commencement of evacuation, and there is a potential for the occupants on the fire floor being unable to escape due to the onset of untenable conditions in passageways that lead to the stairways. Therefore the combined stair pressurisation and zoned smoke control system may not offer adequate protection to the occupants who are most needed to be protected. A smoke management system that pressurises the passageways on every floor that lead to stairways, referred to as corridor pressurisation system in this paper, is proposed as an alternative to zoned smoke control systems to facilitate evacuation. The corridor pressurisation system may be employed in conjunction with stair press u risation systems. The limitation of this approach is that there shall be well-defined passageways that lead to the stairways and that there shall be minimal fire load and ignition sources in the passageways so that a fire is unlikely to start in or to be propagated to the passageways. To investigate the viability of the corridor pressurisation concept, a series of full-scale experiments were carried out in a four-storey experimental building with the fire floor layout arranged to simulate a well-defined passageway outside the room of fire origin (burn room) leading to the stairway. Doors that opened from the passageway into the stairway and to outside were closed, but the door that connected the burn room to the passageway was kept open. The passageway was installed with a corridor pressurisation system that could provide a 50Pa static gauge pressure in the passageway when measured in a no-fire condition. Both flaming fires and flashover fires were included in the test program. The results of the experiments are presented in this paper which confirm corridor pressurisation systems are a viable alternative to zoned smoke control systems. The temperature and concentration of toxic species in the passageway were well within the tenability limits upon application of pressurisation to the passageway. Further research is however required to investigate the effect of providing air relief to the passageway on improving the visibility in the passageway.