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Department of the Environment

Design principles of fire safety

HMSO

The need for a comprehensive guide for fire safety in design was identified as a recommendation by the Authors in their Report to the Department of Trade and Industry-titled Fire and Building Regulatio+in 1990. In summer 1993 the Department of the Environment commissioned us to produce an illustrated text on the fire safety principles underlying current United Kingdom legislation. The target audience was building designers, fire safety officers and building control officers who, together with students and a wider audience in other disciplines, would find the guide a useful amplification of the principles behind legislative provisions. The current methods of prescribing technical levels for fire safety range from broad functional requirements to detailed technical specifications which, together with the continuing changes in detail occasioned by developments, has led us to concentrate on principles rather than numeric detail. The principal contributors were: Geoff G Connell Hon Dip Arch Roger Jowett BSc MSc Dip Arch RIBA ACIArb Phillip H Thomas PhD(Cantab) FIMechE FIFireE MIFS and 0 Leslie Turner OBE RIBA AIFireE They would like to thank their support team, particularly mentioning John Blew, Lesley Turner Dip Arch RIBA, and Robert Biddulph, who produced the illustrations. Foreword written by: Dr William A Allen CBE BArch LLD RIBA HonFAIA HonFIOA, who was Chairman of the Fire Research Advisory Committee 1975-1983.

Chapter 8:
History Current applications

Fire safety engineering


205 207 207

Smoke logging of an enclosure Flames out of openings Fire resistance Trade off The future of fire safety engineering

208 208 209 210

Design principles of fire safety

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History
In the United Kingdom, the Institution of Fire Engineers was founded in 1924 and in the USA, the Society of Fire Protection Engineers has existed since 1950. In 1972, the word safety was added to fire engineering by the newly established Professor of Fire Safety Engineering at the University of Edinburgh because to at least one university official fire engineering sounded like a course in arson! Safety however impacts wider aspects of safety engineering and has the connotation of risk management. Fire safety engineering in short, is the provision of fire safety by quantitative methods based on science and thus has much in common with other disciplines of engineering. Calculation methods derived from structural and heat transfer engineering have long been available for assessing structural behaviour in fires and much of the drive for developing fire safety methodology has come from structural engineers who saw no reason why a fire should be treated in a way different from an earthquake say, or wind or snow or gravitational loads. The range of engineering interest has however expanded well beyond structural considerations. From the 1940s onwards, there have been successful applications of the theory of fluid dynamics to model the movement of gases and smoke. Resource management and operational research have been used to assess fire service deployment and modelling is now being adopted to predict behaviour of people in response to fire. Building Regulations reflect the evolution of systems of rules to meet socially and legally required levels of performance. These are often ill defined and are inherently based on levels of performance of types of solution which-historically-have been regarded as acceptable. The basic problem is the expression of what is unacceptable. Recommendations made after disasters are often designed to prevent the repetition of an identified hazard and whilst this procedure is sometimes criticised for being post hoc it is an evolutionary process and progress is real-as it has been with the aircraft industry. The goal is to identify hypothetical failures and to forestall them by adequate design and proper risk assessment. This may involve extrapolation from the solutions which were acceptable in the past, exercising judgement and art, since quantitative solutions are not necessary available for all problems. Some solutions may involve removing one problem by design changes and replacing it with another, easier-or cheaper-to solve.

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Until recently, most theoretical analysis of fire behaviour was encompassed in zone modelling. This term describes the bringing together of theoretical descriptions of heat transfer and fluid flow to different regions or zones in a room-or building. Some judgement or art is required in the choice of "Zones" such as the upper and lower parts of the gases in a room and the plume joining them. With the increasing availability of fast computation, it has become possible to deal with turbulent flow of gases, taking into account the statistical nature of turbulence (now the subject of chaos theory), although certain basic coefficients have to be determined by experiment. These fluid flow theories are referred to by the terms CFD (computational fluid dynamics)-or f i e l d modelling. Calculations are then based on the solution of spatial differential equations. Zone modelling is adequate for many purposes, but is inherently deficient due to the lack of a theory of fluctuation and eddies and the neglect of certain continuities between one zone and its neighbour. There are also problems in CFD; some sizes of eddies are not always included and there is a problem in linking the solid and gas phase of materials; variations in physical or chemical properties with temperature and lack of directional uniformity in the movement of the moisture may present problems; flammable materials need to have a description of flamespread properties in terms that cannot be deduced from conventional fire tests or flamespread. Improvements in the quality of data or application of the method or model can be derived by inventing new tests, but it may take some time for these to be accepted, or to be incorporated into regulations. Some of these zone and field models are incorporated into computer programmes which are available commercially. Users however should understand the nature of the approximations and limitations of the physics employed. This is not to argue that the results are necessarily defective but the results may not be as precise as the numerical calculations imply, even if the physical basis is sound. There are some programmes where even this is not so. However technical progress is rapidly being made and basic fire science is rapidly being codified into practical, useful codes of practice and design methodologies.

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Current applications
In considering examples of the application of fire safety engineering, only the essential principles can be referred to: any application to a particular building will need to consider details beyond the scope of this publication.

Smoke logging of an enclosure

We can undertake experiments or rely on past experience to show how quickly a room can become smoke logged, but it is also possible to calculate the time period and to assess quantitatively how various factors influence it. Taking as a very basic example a room with an opening in one wall, theory can be used to show that the pressure rises as a result of a fire inside are relatively small. The heat source produces a rising plume of gas, lighter than its surroundings, which entrains air as it rises up into the hot layer, which becomes deeper. The formulae are available by which to relate the mass flow of hot gas to the rate of heat release, Q, and the height above the heat source, Z. Equating the rate of loss of the lower layer air to that lifted up leads to a formula for the time interval (t, - t,) during which the base of the upper layer descends from height Z, to height Z,. This extremely simple zone model gives a formula:-

where Atloo, is thefloor area 0 is the gas density i s the rate of heat release Q C i s a known constant

This formula shows:-

Except for a room with a low level opening, the height, Z, never becomes zero in a finite time, so in practice it is usual to take a final value for Z, as say 1.5 to 2 metres. If Z, is taken as 1.5 metres and if Z,, the height of the room, is much greater than this, then the time period does not depend much on the height of the room-only on the floor area. The reason for the lack of importance of the enclosure height may not at first be apparent. A greater mass of air is entrained as the height of the plume increases. This has the effect of accelerating the descent of the base of the hot layer so the height of the room doesn't have a marked effect on the time taken to descend to a critical level.

Variations in this type of calculation have been used for 30 years in roof venting design and have been shown by experiment to be consistent with general experience. The method is now being combined with formula for the movement of people to develop calculation methods for safer egress.

Flames out of openings

The impetus for development in fire safety engineering methodology may in some cases derive from the need to solve quite unusual problems-the data and techniques then finding much wider application. A classic example of this is a study in the early 1960s of whether flames from a group of burning buildings could threaten a large steel structure above them-the Tokyo Tower. A mathematical analysis-not repeated here-was made of the rising hot plume and experiments devised on a small and large scale to check parts of the theory and also scaling laws, similar to those used in roof venting and current studies of smoke movement. These studies helped to determine the effects of changing the ratio of window width to height and to develop formulae for determining the horizontal balcony widths and vertical separations necessary for safety. Spread can occur up the outside of buildings, even if the facade is itself nonflammable, because the flame may cause ignition through openings in rooms above. Imposing.a vertical separation reduces the hazard and because it is possible to calculate the flame lengths, minimum vertical separations can be calculated as can the balcony projection required to prevent spread. It has sometimes been overlooked however that fire on a wide front cannot be stopped by a balcony because the flame tends to adhere to the wall if more air is entrained into the flames than can get behind them. This work has been incorporated as one ingredient in the safe design of external structures, but is also fundamental to the engineering design of atria. For several decades efforts have been directed to relating the performance of a structural element in a fire test (for example BS 476) to that of the whole structure in a fire. Most attention has been directed at the first step-the relationship between the fire test and the fire for one element. The second step, relating the fire test to the performance of the whole structure in a fire is a continuing subject of study. From work dating from as far back as the 1920s it had been established that in a simple enclosure with a ventilation opening, the fire resistance required was proportional to the fire load per unit floor area. This was later modified by identification of the effects of the geometry of the ventilation opening.

Fire resistance

Formulae are now available that express required fire resistance time in terms of the fire load and the various geometrical properties of the room and the opening (or for one effective equivalent if there are several openings). The relevant properties are the ventilation opening area, the opening height, the area of the walls, ceiling and floor. Allowance has to be made for the thermal properties of the enclosing walls, ceiling and floor. The theory is still incomplete, it assumes the temperature is uniform throughout the space and this may not be so. The formulae also rest on assumed correlations, unsupported by physically based theory, of experimental burning rates. Continuing research is attempting to overcome these deficiencies-but it is important to be aware of current limitations.

Trade off

There are many occasions in design when consideration may be given to an over provision of one aspect of fire safety in order to effect a reduction or the removal of another. A common example is seeking to reduce the fire resistance level required for structural elements by employing sprinklers. What are the principles to be employed in such an exchange or trade off as it is commonly called? Fundamental to this discussion-in the absence of any generally recognised quantitative assessment of risk-is the determination of equivalence of the level of safety in the likely scenarios of fire occurrence and consequences between the proposal and what historically may have been regarded as acceptable. In addition to a general statement of purpose-to provide a safe building-it is necessary to understand the potential benefits and drawbacks of a particular fire protection system. The historical purpose of fire resistance was to limit structural damage and in so doing to provide protection for the routes used for escape and for the access by the fire brigade. Most fire safety engineering calculations are based on a requirement to survive a burnout. However, in a class of occupancies, there is a statistical variation in the fire load and the associated fire resistance required. Introducing sprinklers reduces the probability that the structure will be exposed to a fire which threatens it. Hence fire resistance requirements can be relaxed while still maintaining the same overall probability of structural failure in that occupancy. Risk is a product of the probability and the consequence of a hazardous event. For monetary loss there are insurance criteria, but for life safety the relevance of the concepts employed may be less sure.

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Fire Safety (IFS) has a professionally qualified membership and historically close links with the SFPE and with the Institution of Fire Engineers-an organisation based originally on technically qualified fire service officers but now widening its membership. The first undergraduate course available in the UK was at what is now The University of the South Bank in London and there are many Masters courses, the oldest being at Edinburgh University. At these institutions links have been found between departments, particularly those of Civil, Mechanical and Chemical Engineering, but links with Departments of Architecture could well develop. There is much international contact and a model syllabus has been published by an international group of academics. The future development of fire safety engineering is not in question in the Industrial Sector. The question at issue is its future in the Building Sector. Fire safety engineering will be most in demand for problems beyond the conventional ones for which prescriptive measures may continue to prove adequate-although even in those cases, the potential for the application of engineering methods to achieve the same performance more efficiently or to improve performance at the same cost should not be underestimated.

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