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Fundamentals of fire and fire safety design
Published in Feng Fu, Fire Safety Design for Tall Buildings, 2021
Fire resistance rating is the fire resistance assigned to a building element on the basis of a test or some other approval system. Some countries use other terms such as fire rating, fire endurance rating, or fire resistance level. These terms are usually interchangeable. Fire resistance ratings are most often assigned in whole numbers of hours or parts of hours, in order to allow easy comparison with the fire resistance requirements specified in building codes. For example, a wall that has been shown by test to have a fire resistance of 75 min will usually be assigned a fire resistance rating of 1 h.
Fire Hazards and Associated Terminology
Published in Asim Kumar Roy Choudhury, Flame Retardants for Textile Materials, 2020
A fire-resistance rating typically means the duration for which a passive fire protection system can withstand a standard fire resistance test. This can be quantified simply as a measure of time, or it may entail a host of other criteria, involving other evidence of functionality or fitness for purpose.
Fire Safety in Design and Construction
Published in Peter M. Bochnak, Fire Loss Control, 2020
Before proceeding further with our discussion of types of construction, it seems advisable to define fire resistance rating: the length of time for which a structure or structural members can resist a fire, usually before each can no longer support loads. The fire resistance ratings of masonry units to composite assemblies of structural materials for buildings including bearings and other walls and partitions, columns, girders, beams, slabs and composite slab and beam assemblies for floors and roofs, are obtained from fire tests conducted by nationally recognized testing laboratories in conformance with the Standard Methods of Fire Tests on Building Construction and Materials NFPA 251 (2). For more detailed information, refer to this standard for full understanding of the tests and the failure points.
Full-scale Fire Experiment of Timber Buildings in Rural Areas of Southwest China
Published in International Journal of Architectural Heritage, 2023
Longlong Yang, Wenli Liu, Qing Liu, Songtao Liu, Yu Tong, Zenan Xiao, Tianchang Meng, Wenbin Wei, Wei Zhang
There are usually no protective coatings on the surface of the walls or structural elements. In addition, structural elements, such as wallboards in Chinese traditional timber buildings, are quite thin (thickness ranging from 0.02 to 0.035 m), which are easy to lose integrity due to the flame and thermal radiation. As these traditional timber buildings are usually situated on a hillside, the fire separation distance between buildings may be quite inadequate, which results in fire spreading more readily both horizontally and vertically. Therefore, fire retardant coatings and enhanced structural elements in fire resistance rating will play an important role in protecting buildings. This work is mainly aimed at the visual observation of fire spreading, temperature distribution and smoke movement characteristics in compartment III. In the experiment, a kind of commercial fire retardant coating was also applied on the surface of compartment I. The observations showed that fire retardant materials performed well during the fire. The technical and economic comparison of coated compartment I with the other three compartments is still under analysis. A compound board that combined timber board and galvanized plate was used as walls and floor slabs in the experiment. The fire resistance and failure mechanism of the special structural elements will be discussed in our future work.
Parametric investigation on the post-fire flexural behaviour of novel ferrocement panels with geopolymer mortar
Published in European Journal of Environmental and Civil Engineering, 2023
Fire remains one of the most potential risks to buildings and structures. Most structural materials like steel and concrete on exposure to fire losses its strength and as consequence the structure gets collapsed or suffers irreparable damage (Lahoti et al., 2020). Fire safety is of paramount importance for protecting the life and property of the habitants of the structure. In the event of fire break out the structure must be adequately robust to maintain its integrity, at least for a sufficient duration, to allow the occupants to safely exit the structure. The structural fire safety codes, define fire safety as the ability of a structure to withstand fire with minimal loss of load carrying capacity under standard fire conditions. The fire resistance rating which is the actual quantification of fire resistance is based on the time endurance up to which the structure is capable of maintaining its structural integrity and stability while exposed to standard fire conditions (Rickard & Van Riessen, 2014). The fire exposure is simulated in the laboratory by introducing temperature load on the prototype structural members and evaluating its strength after damage (Zhou et al., 2019).
Fire Safety of Historical Buildings: Principles and Methodological Approach
Published in International Journal of Architectural Heritage, 2019
In a similar manner, a fire dynamics analysis was conducted to demonstrate that flashover will not occur in any of the compartments. The ceiling height is sufficiently large that common furniture and contents of this building cannot generate sufficient heat to enable flashover to occur. This is of extreme importance because it shows that temperatures within the compartment will not reach values that will threaten the structure nor ignite timber. A compliant solution would require a fire resistance rating for all structural elements in red (Figure 6(a,c and d)), this will have most likely implied encapsulation or replacement that might have to include particularly valuable elements such as the vitreaux. The premise behind the fire resistance rating is the exposure of a structure to a post-flashover fire for a duration capable of consuming the integrity of the fuel content (i.e. time to burn-out) (ASTM-E-119 2015). Given that the fire will not reach flashover, temperatures of the smoke layer can be estimated using a zone model and in this case indicate that they will never exceed 300°C. This is consistent with values presented in the literature (SFPE 2015). A detailed heat transfer and structural analysis could have been performed to demonstrate that the building structure offers adequate strength, nevertheless, the estimated temperatures rendered this analysis unnecessary. Instead, only a heat transfer analysis was performed to establish any areas where a temperature increase, even mild, could create potential structural problems. This analysis identified no areas of concern. The focus then became compartmentalizing the smoke, which implies a detailed inspection of any possible smoke migration paths. Filling these paths to avoid smoke migration is most definitely a much less intrusive intervention.