Case Studies in Fire Safety最新文献

This paper explores the use of multi-agent continuous evacuation modelling for representing large-scale evacuation scenarios at music festivals. A 65,000 people capacity music festival area was simulated using the model Pathfinder. Three evacuation scenarios were developed in order to explore the capabilities of evacuation modelling during such incidents, namely (1) a preventive evacuation of a section of the festival area containing approximately 15,000 people due to a fire breaking out on a ship, (2) an escalating scenario involving the total evacuation of the entire festival area (65,000 people) due to a bomb threat, and (3) a cascading scenario involving the total evacuation of the entire festival area (65,000 people) due to the threat of an explosion caused by a ship engine overheating. This study suggests that the analysis of the people-evacuation time curves produced by evacuation models, coupled with a visual analysis of the simulated evacuation scenarios, allows for the identification of the main factors affecting the evacuation process (e.g., delay times, overcrowding at exits in relation to exit widths, etc.) and potential measures that could improve safety.

This paper presents a methodology for risk analysis and assessment to manage territorial data based on Geographical Information Systems from the viewpoints of climatology, geography, disaster science, environmental science, fire safety and urban services. The results in this methodology are intended to support local and provincial government agencies to: make resource allocation decisions; make high-level planning decisions and raise public awareness of disasters risk, its causes, and ways to manage it.

The Autonomous Community of Navarra, as a result of a special administrative status, possesses a number of specific features that have let it build up a high technological development in several fields. The main areas of research are healthcare and renewable energies, but also focused in the implementation of security systems at territorial level.These advances and particularities of the GIS software used by the fire fighters of this community will be the ones shown in this paper, as well as its prospective improvements in the collaboration with the experts responsible for urban planning of a School of Architecture.

After the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant [NPP] accident, there has been an increased concern with the safety of NPPs in terms of external hazards, one of which is a forest fire which can create potential challenges to safety functions and the structural integrity of an NPP. As a part of the development of a risk assessment methodology for forest fires as an external hazard, forest fire propagation simulations have been performed by using the FARSITE simulator. These simulations have been used to evaluate two intensity parameters (i.e. fireline intensity and reaction intensity) and three other key parameters (i.e. flame length, rate-of-spread, and forest fire arrival time) which are related to “heat” and “flame” effects on an NPP. Sensitivity analyses for a wide range of weather conditions were performed in order to identify the variable ranges of the intensity and other key parameters. The location studied was selected from among areas with typical topographical and vegetation surrounding NPPs in Japan. The NPP is facing the sea and surrounded by hills, distanced from an urban area, with mostly broad leaf forests, several paddy fields and a few pasture areas.

Low-to-high frequency weather conditions have been utilized in this analysis; forest fire propagation simulations were performed “with/without prevailing wind” (i.e. 0–24 m/s wind speed) and “high/low values for ambient temperature and relative humidity” (−4.3 to 37 °C and 5–99%, respectively) according to the recorded data ranges for the typical NPP site. The maximum values of fireline intensity and rate-of-spread are 4.7 × 10² kW/m and 2.4 m/min and they depend very much on prevailing wind speed and relative humidity (around 2.3 and 1.8 times respectively) but less on ambient temperature (around 1.1 times). Reaction intensity and flame length change within relatively narrow ranges (around 1.7 and 1.5 times respectively) even for all the variation in weather parameters. The forest fire arrival time at the site is reduced by a factor of 5 with changing prevailing wind speed from the recorded-highest to zero. The arrival time increases some 3.4 times with the highest humidity compared to the recorded-lowest conditions, although it is changed little even by varying ambient temperature.

Given that this study shows that the maximum height of a flame on a canopy top is close to the range of power line height, a loss of offsite power is recognized as a possible subsequent event during a forest fire.

Determining the combustion characteristics of combustibles in high-speed trains is the foundation of evaluating the fire hazard on high-speed trains scientifically, and establishing effective active and passive fire precautions. In this study, the double seats in the compartments of CRH1 high-speed trains were used as the main research object. Under different test conditions, including the power of ignition sources and ventilation rates, full-scale furniture calorimeter tests were conducted to study important fire combustion characteristics such as the ignition characteristics of seats, heat release rate, mass loss rate, total heat release, temperature variation, and smoke release rate. The relationships among these parameters were analyzed and summarized into combustion behavior and characteristics, thus providing fundamental data and reference for the development of fire precautions and safety design of high-speed trains. The results in this test are as follows: (i) The double seats of high-speed trains are relatively easy to ignite and susceptible to the fire ground environment. (ii) The combustion temperature in the test apparatus exceeded 600 °C in only 2 min for the larger ignition source. (iii) The heat release rate exceeded 800 kW. (iv) The total heat release resulted mainly from flame combustion. (v) The final mass loss rate was ∼30%. (vi) The lowest light transmittance was <25%. (vii) The change process of temperature with time has the same trend as the change process of heat release rate. (viii) Suppressing flame combustion and controlling the smoke generated from the seat materials themselves played key roles in retarding the combustion of high-speed train seats.

In this paper we present a surface wildfire model which can be used to develop and test new firefighting strategies and land use planning practices. This model is simple, easy to implement and can predict the rate of fire spread, the fire contour and both burning and burned areas. It also incorporates weather conditions and land topography. The predictive capability of the model is partially assessed by comparison with data from laboratory-scale and prescribed burning experiments. A sensitivity analysis is conducted to identify the most influential input model parameters controlling fire propagation.

Shanghai Tower is an existing super high-rise building composed of mega frame-core-outrigger lateral resisting systems. Its structural safety in fire has been given great attention. This paper presents an independent review of the performance of Shanghai Tower in case of fire. Two fire scenarios: standard fires and parametric fires have been considered. The fire resistance of key component, including the concrete core, mega columns, the composite floor, outrigger trusses and belt trusses were examined first. Their real fire resistance periods proved to be far beyond the design fire resistance. The components with weak fire resistance such as peripheral steel columns and web members of belt trusses were then removed to study the resistance of the residual structure against progressive collapse. The results show that Shanghai Tower has a minimum of 3 h fire resistance against fire-induced progressive collapse. The concrete components have smaller residual displacements compared to the steel components. It is recommended, for the design of other similar structures, that effective fire protection should be provided for the outrigger trusses to guarantee the connection between the core and mega columns.

The aim of this innovative educational project is to encourage students’ interest in one of the most underrated fields of fire safety: emergency lighting. So this educational project aims to combine the relationships amongst the evacuation safety theory, real manufacturers products and an specific software for its usage. In order to achieve it, a ‘technical cabinet’ has been designed and built for its use in the Laboratory of a University School. The design, content and learning system of the cabinet confirmed the validity of the initial concept during the first year of use. A protocol has also been developed for the technical cabinet, so that the teaching experience may be of use in other Schools of Architecture.

This paper highlights a shortcoming in the current system of structural fire resistance design, proposes how it can be addressed and shows how the perceived barriers to change can be overcome. It is an opinion piece intended to stimulate discussion.

Whilst structural fire engineering knowledge may be relatively underdeveloped compared to other engineering disciplines, the industry has made great progress in recent decades in understanding and analysing fire behaviour and the response of structures, as well as developing fire protection products that can be accurately specified to meet performance criteria. In addition, through modern fire and risk engineering there are also methods to establish the appropriate fire resistance rating for a building (or element) based on risk profile, fire loading, building fabric and potential ventilation amongst other things. It is the objective of many within the industry for structural fire engineering to become an integrated part of the design process, ultimately leading to safer and more efficient structures. However, this paper questions whether current structural fire resistance design methods achieve the consistent level of crudeness required for this, or whether the means by which structural performance in fire is quantified, standard fire resistance, represents a weak link that undermines the entire process.

Although the concept of standard fire resistance, benchmarked against performance under normalised furnace test heating regimes, is useful in that it allows for the comparison necessary to safeguard consistency across products, design methods and geographies, the historic 15-min fire resistance increments (for example 60, 75, 90 min) result in inconsistent levels of safety. Refined grades, as in fact already allowed under fire resistance testing standards, would yield significant benefits for reliability and design efficiency. The paper uses hypothetical case studies to exhibit the merits of refined fire resistance grades and explains how implementing the enhanced classification system may be readily achievable.