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To date, only a handful of full-scale building experiments have been conducted world-wide,
and none have evaluated the post-earthquake fire performance of the complete building system.
The full-scale building tests in this project allow for the unique opportunity to assess the
integrated building fire safety system performance under post-earthquake conditions.
It provides an opportunity to identify those characteristics of either ground motion induced damage,
resulting fires, or the combination of systems damage and fire, that can lead to dangerous situations
for escaping occupants and emergency responders. In particular, it allows investigation into failure
or significantly reduced performance of passive and active fire protection systems, with a focus on
those failures which could lead to room-to-room fire spread, building-to-building fire spread,
untenable conditions during egress and/or localized or global failure during
fire-fighting operations.
Fire protection systems are generally categorized as being passive or active.
Passive measures include fire resistivity of structural members and compartment barriers,
spray-applied fire protection, fire resistive interior finish materials, penetration seals,
doors and dampers (Fig. 1). Active measures include fire suppression, detection, alarm,
communication and smoke management systems (Fig. 2). In addition, measures for emergency egress and
fire fighting activities are also needed in a building, including protected exits, elevator recall
and fire fighters override, wet or dry standpipes. The infrastructure required to support
these measures include reliable water supply (mains to building, local storage tanks),
primary and emergency power, and occupant and emergency responder communication systems.
The level of building fire safety provided during a fire event depends on the ability to deliver
the expected system performance on demand.
In the first instance, data will be collected relative to forces on the fire protection systems
during ground movement. This will then be followed by visual, pressure, and other non-destructive
testing. The building will then be subjected to controlled fires, which will be used to assess
thermal and non-thermal response. Tests will include moderate and fast burning fires up to 5MW peak
heat release rate. Tests will be conducted using a natural gas burner. The use of a gas burner
has been selected since it provides the dual benefit of better control of fire growth rate and
heat release rate – data which are important to fire effects modeling – and the ability to
immediately terminate the fire, which serves to protect the structure from unacceptable damage
from fire or fire suppression activity (particularly in the cases where the sprinkler system is
unavailable or disabled.
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