Fire Safety Design For Tall Buildings

Performance Objectives for Tall Building Safety Strategy

Question:

Discuss about the Designing for critical infrastructure protection.

Infrastructure is one of the primary industries around the globe. With globalization and advent of technology the number of buildings has also increased considerably. The buildings have evolved and developed in a wide number of ways such as in construction materials required, height and the composition of compartments (Building Design + Construction. 2018).   The increasing height of buildings has become one of the most concerned problems with the rise in the tall buildings like Taipei 101 at 508 meters and Burj Khalifa at 828 meters. The term mega tall has been introduced for those buildings whose height is more than 600 meters.  According to Cowlard et al. (2013), the tall buildings have increased considerably since the year 2011. The primary reasons for this kind of development has been financial, political and environmental aspects, however without technological aspects these developments would not have been possible.

The designs of the buildings have been changing quite often and due to this various advancements in the structural engineering have to be made. These technological and engineering requirements will help in the changes with respect to the size, height and the complexity in the designs. These advancements have also leaded to decrease in costs and carbon footprint as well.

The given report examines various theories and literature available in this aspect and aims to define the various performance objectives which are necessary to make the relative tall building safety strategy and the present engineering capability. The report will be making recommendations on the same.

The high rise buildings can be described as a relatively larger structure whereby the height of the structure is more than 75 meters or consist of more than 7 floors.  The main component of a high rise building is that the height and the composed design of the building may have a serious impact on the evacuation of the occupants of a building during the fire disaster or any other related disaster. Given below is a list of some of the tallest buildings around the globe:

• CTF Finance Centre- Located in Guangzhou, China; the building is 1740 feet tall.
• One World Trade Center- Located in the New York City, United States; the building is 1776 feet tall.
• Lotte World Tower- Located in Seoul is at a spurring height of 1,823 feet
• Ping An Finance Centre- Situated in Shenzhen, China is at a height of 1,965 feet
• Abraj Al-Bait Clock Tower in Mecca has a height of 1,971 feet
• Shanghai Tower located in Shanghai at a great height of 2,073 feet
• Burj Khalifa situated in Dubai is at a height of 2,717 feet and is one of the tallest buildings in the globe.

A fire safety design refers to the design of a building or any other structure which is easy to evacuate in case o any situation occurs related to fire. This can be measured in both evacuation time and also the capability of the high rise to withstand the fire.  This is determined by implementation of a mechanism like design measures and tools which help in the evacuation of occupants.

Technology related to fire safety design is referred to as related technology.  Various technologies can be used to make the safety designs in the related technology to the safety design of the high rise buildings can be defined as the use of those technologies which can be used to make the safety aspect of the buildings and evacuations very easy

Figure 1: The various classes of fire (Sources: Eisele and Kloft 2013).

A fire strategy which is holistic in nature is the need of the need of the hour. The primary fire strategy consists of two critical principles which comprise of the performance of the given building and the egress strategy.

Engineering Capability for Tall Building Safety Strategy

Building performance can be further divided into the fire spread mitigation and the structural performance. According to Gerard, Barber and Wolski (2013), the evacuation strategy is primarily concerned with time which is required to leave the building with respect to the different occupants.  The building performance can be described as thee time period for which the building will be able to withstand the various effects of the fire and remain intact. A safe design of a building should be such that the structure and compartmentation of a building remains intact till the building has been evacuated. This shall then allow the implementation of the strategy of egress. However Lawson, Ogden and Goodier (2014), stated that for the tall buildings the scenario is quite different. The height of the different buildings along with their limited vertical escape routes causes threw to essential components to become quite limited. Hence the time taken to evacuate increases considerably. The structural elements also heat in a different manner which ultimately leads to the failure of the structures.

This was one of the primary reasons why the World Trade Center towers collapsed. This was back in 2002. It is expected as stated by Lehmann (2013), that as the heights of the buildings have been increasing considerably, the problems will become even more complex. Hence, the given sections will be taking relevant aspects of literature with regard to this matter and examine what is the appropriate design with regard to the safety aspect of tall buildings.

Evacuation can be described as the time which is required to make all the occupants to reach out of the given building. It is considered that a shorter time is generally preferred as it signifies the safety of the building.  However, due to the problem of vertical designs of the tall buildings, accompanied by narrow safety routes, the evacuation time tends to increase to a great extent.

For these tall buildings Peng,  Ni and Huang  (2013), stated that a safe zone should be built which will allow all the occupants to transit in a safe place whether inside or outside the building. This strategy allows the building to become a collection of small storied buildings whereby different evacuation philosophies can be relatively applied.  These philosophies include staged phased and total evacuation. They have been primarily formed for tall buildings.

Adding to this aspect the heating times of the structural elements used in the given building also become relevant causes of failure in safety of the occupants. According to Ronchi and Nilsson (2013), if the people have to escape from the stairwells then the staircases should be built in a manner such that they remain smoke free. The problem with tall buildings is that there exists inadequate measurements and they become smoke logged easily.  It has been suggested by Peng, Ni and Huang (2013), that the pressurization systems should be installed in order to ensure that the stairwells stay smoke free.

Following that the system is designed in a manner such that the surrounding areas are operate able due for everyday activities. However, tall mega buildings lack safe stairwell, tenability levels and hence the building fire safety design for tall buildings may not be considered valid.

The Need for a Holistic Fire Safety Strategy

Structural performance

The structural design of modern buildings tends to be based on the various needs that the buildings are required to fulfill which include protection from the direction of wind and abide by the complex structure of the building. According to Watts (2016), the buildings, designed in a manner such that they are able to allow adequate time to the occupants to escape from the fire. A recent study conducted had shown that there existed 12 out 50 buildings with a certain degree of failure. This study was conducted by Al-Kodmany and Ali (2013), which examined numerous large buildings and their fire design system.

The given section would elaborate on the various advancements that have taken place in the field of Fire Safety Design if the buildings.

1. BSB prefabricated construction process

Figure 2: The BSB prefabricated construction process (Source: Building Design + Construction. 2018).

In the given process, a fabricated steel structure system is used for structuring the system and conducting the onsite installation. This is done using flanges, high strength bolts to support for the workers. Long with that, installable floor slabs and other pre-fabricated materials are installed (Atlas 2013). The primary advantages of this technology are that it can resist a 9 magnitude earthquake and also has improved energy efficiency.

1. Kone ultrarope

This technology is a new carbon fiber hosting technology which will be able to double the distance which a lift can travel in a single go. The Ultra rope is extremely light and can decrease the time between the movements. This breakthrough will go a long way in the development of the tall buildings (Baker and Steemers 2014). This will also provide the builders a great degree of energy as well as material effectiveness.

1. Megatruss seismic isolation structure

The given technology has been applied in the Nakanoshima Festival Tower in Japan. This given structure helps in resolving two primary requirements by using the structural built solution which helps in easy transition activity.

Various tall buildings tend to comprise of different kinds of halls and buildings. The given technology uses oil dampers, lead rubber bearings and belt truss to help the building to have various kinds of requirements in the same building. 

1. Raster Façade Precast Concrete System

 

Figure 5:  The concrete system (Source: Building Design + Construction. 2018).

This is the second most important innovative aspect with reference to safety design and resistance of the high rise buildings. This technology allows floor to ceiling lass with the help of triple glazing which consist of protective lowers. The concrete which is used is a fire proof substance which then eliminated the need of the additional requirement of fire protection.

After the mishap at the World Trade Centre towers took place, various questions arised as to why such an event had taken place. Huge investigation started taking place into the history of fire safety engineering and equipments. This lead to a pressure on various organizations to formulate certain guidelines with respect to the fire safety design. The given section shall analyze the Guidelines related to Designing Fire Safety in Very Tall Buildings. However according to Greeno (2014), this guidelines does not address the primary issues related to the fire design and is unable to establish clear performance objectives for the buildings in case of calamities (Sergeevich, Aleksandrovich and Mikhailovna 2014). The given guidelines provide details as to the tools that must be available in the building to fight against the fire, but the strategic aspect has been missing from the guidelines.  The given guidelines provide an extended version of the traditional prescriptive solutions. In any manner, the strategies that the engineer aims to adapt to. However, there exist high chances that the engineer might miss the critical issues that should be addressed to such as the prescribed design.

Challenges in Evacuation

Singapore has a strict set of guidelines when it comes to the safety aspect of the different buildings present in the country. The city forces tend to follow the guideline based on SS EN 1998-1 also referred to as the BC3: 2013 (Kavilkar and Patil 2014). The given guideline states down a strict set of laws relating to the construction of building and evacuation procedure to be followed by the safety engineers in order to protect the occupants of the building.

In the United States, a similar guideline is present named the International building Code which is a building construction code with special reference to the safety design related to fire. The given code is not only applied in the States but also in other countries like Abu Dhabi Caribbean cities, Arabia and others (Kibert 2016).

The International Business Code addresses various health and safety issues related to the buildings based on the performance requirements of the building. The motto behind this given code is to promote public safety and save the life of the occupants during calamities like fire.

The main difference in the law stated down by Singapore and the one stated by the United States of America is that the United States has better defined outlines as to what must be the course of action which needs to be followed in cases like these because of their previous experience with the WTC tower, however on the other hand the guidelines stated by the Singapore force is not that clear (Mele et al. 2014).

The given section will be highlighting certain fire safety design principles that should be followed if a mishap takes place in a high rise building

1. Fire Avoidance

The first aspect suggests that fire in buildings should be avoided at any cost.  This can be done by keeping all heating materials separately and reducing the materials that can cause fire. The fire load must also be reduced in order to remain safe (Prasad and Snow 2014).

1. Fire Detection

A building must be adequately designed in a manner such that if afire takes place, there should be enough equipments and suitable design to enable early detection (Buchanan and Abu 2017). This may be informing of fire detectors or smoke detectors at visible vicinities and peepholes so that the rooms are visually accessible in an office or a hospital like structure.

1. Fire Growth Restriction

Thirdly, all high rise buildings should be a storehouse of various fire extinguishing equipments which shall help in putting off the fire in cases of emergency. These may include fire extinguishers, Fire blanket facility, adequate water supply and Sand.

1. Fire Containment

This is an extension of the previous strategy which states that in cases where the fire extinguisher is unable to put off the fire then, the fire needs to be limited to a restricted area by techniques like plugging all the holes, using fire rated walls and constructing fire cladding (Reddy et al. 2016).

1. Fire Control

In this aspect, the high rise buildings must have access to all fire lighting equipments which will help a firm to put off fire.

1. Smoke Control

Building Performance

The buildings must be designed in a manner whereby the ir emitted from smokes may blow out into spaces which helps a building to keep clear of smoke.

1. Escape Provisions

Hence, there must exist enough stairwells and passages which may assist the occupants to evacuate the building easily.

Conclusion

Therefore, from the given report it could be analyzed that with the rise in the number of high rise buildings, the need for a fire safety design system has also increased. However although the technology has improved greatly, the high rise builders have not been able to incorporate these designs in the given buildings which sends an alarm. The given report throws light on the need and concept of fire safety design in the high rise buildings and also describes the various important terms with respect to the given subject. Important aspects of a fire safety design such as the structure of the buildings, evacuation needs and strategies along with various guidelines in Singapore with respect to the safety design have been stated. The report has also highlighted the recent innovations in the domain of high rise buildings and how they can be implemented to ensure better building designs. Certain fire safety principle has also been provided in form of recommendations. Fire safety design in high rise buildings is the need of the hour and should not be overlooked.

References

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Atlas, R.I., 2013. 21st century security and CPTED: Designing for critical infrastructure protection and crime prevention. CRC Press.

Baker, N. and Steemers, K., 2014. Daylight design of buildings: a handbook for architects and engineers. Routledge.

Buchanan, A.H. and Abu, A.K., 2017. Structural design for fire safety. John Wiley & Sons.

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Cowlard, A., Bittern, A., Abecassis-Empis, C. and Torero, J., 2013. Fire safety design for tall buildings. Procedia Engineering, 62, pp.169-181.

Eisele, J. and Kloft, E. eds., 2013. High-rise manual: typology and design, construction and technology. Birkhauser.

Gerard, R., Barber, D. and Wolski, A., 2013. Fire safety challenges of tall wood buildings. National Fire Protection Research Foundation.

Greeno, R., 2014. Building Services, Technology and Design. Routledge.

Kavilkar, R. and Patil, S., 2014. Study of High Rise Residential Buildings in Indian Cities (A Case Study-Pune City). International Journal of Engineering and Technology, 6(1), p.86.

Kibert, C.J., 2016. Sustainable construction: green building design and delivery. John Wiley & Sons.

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