关于建筑火灾的外文文献

THE RISK IMPOSED BY FIRE TO BUILDINGSAND HOW TO ADDRESS ITJosé L. Torero11Edinburgh Center for Fire Research, The University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom

THE RISK IMPOSED BY FIRE TO BUILDINGS AND HOW TO ADDRESS IT

José L. Torero1

1Edinburgh Center for Fire Research, The University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom Abstract: The history of fire science originates in the desire to enhance destruction of

infrastructure by means of fire. Many of the basic principles of fire growth

and the behaviour of structures in fire were developed within the context of

an organized and deliberate attempt to use fire as a tool for urban destruction.

Buildings are inherently vulnerable to fire due to their use, thus they have to

be designed with the objective of minimizing the probability of fire

occurrence and of damage potential. Nevertheless, the design criteria rely

mostly on scenarios that are considered to be consistent with the building use.

Within the design process there is no consideration to premeditated fires or

those corresponding to a strategy for destruction. Furthermore, generally

design is done in a prescriptive manner and thus is framed by rules and

regulations that do not provide an estimate of performance. Only a detailed

understanding of the performance of a building or structure in the event of a

fire can allow estimating and understanding its vulnerabilities and can result

in a strategy to minimize the impact of fire as a tool for terrorism.

Key words: fire risk, buildings, structures, terrorism, damage

1. INTRODUCTION

The introduction of practises that result in an increase level of safety dates probably to ancient times. Observations of the devastating effects of fires lead from very early on to the establishment of prescriptive require-ments. These requirements can stand on very basic principles such as build-

41

K.V. Frolov and G.B. Baecher (eds.),

Protection of Civilian Infrastructure from Acts of Terrorism, 41–57.

© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.

THE RISK IMPOSED BY FIRE TO BUILDINGSAND HOW TO ADDRESS ITJosé L. Torero11Edinburgh Center for Fire Research, The University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom

42J.L. Toreroing separation and maximum escape distances or on more complex specifi-cations like the need for sprinkler systems and compartmentation. These requirements became formalized at the beginning of the 20th Century in a series of codes and standards. A good example is the fire resistance stan-dard test methods and the “Standard Fire” curve embedded in it. This stan-dard prevails as a commonly used method to assess the performance of structural elements in a fire [1]. The first building codes in the USA where developed after the Baltimore Fire in 1904. Since then, institutions like the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and Underwriters Laborato-ries have guided the development of codes and standard test methods, NFPA started in 1896 and Underwriters Laboratories in 1900. A similar history can be constructed for many countries. Since its initial formalization “fire safety” has been prescriptive, and despite the technical origin and em-pirical observations supporting most standards, these are incapable of as-sessing the performance of a building in the event of a fire. Instead they assume adequate levels of safety based on the scientific and empirical in-formation that forms the basis to the codes. Clearly, scenarios that escape the experiments that support the standards result in undefined safety levels. Systematic generation of scenarios that escape the prescriptive design specifications became a destruction tool during World War II and the origin of modern fire science. Hoyt Hottel describes in great detail the process that lead to the establishment of active fire research programmes at Harvard and MIT, in the United States, as part of the war effort and with the specific objective of maximizing urban destruction via fire [2]. Hottel indicates that a meeting of the National Defence Research Committee convened by the presidents of Harvard and MIT in 1941 concentrated on the replacement of magnesium and rubber-thickened naphtha as incendiaries and on the radio-active ignition of wood. This meeting lead to what might be considered one of the first 20th Century explicit scientific publications on fire research [3].

A number of well known discoveries followed this initiative, among the best known is the generation of Napalm by Louis Fieser (Harvard Univer-sity). Already, by 1942, gasoline thickeners such as Napalm where being tested to demonstrate their fire setting potential on wooden structures. Ar-chitects Mendelshon (of German Background) and Raymond (with 18 years of practice in Tokyo) where then summoned to carefully design structures that resembled those present in German and Japanese cities. Careful atten-tion was given to between floor and ceiling cinders developed in Germany to stop the lateral spread of fire. Test of incendiary bombs were carried on these structures in May 1943. Similar studies where simultaneously in pro-gress in Britain under Professors Finch and Egerton at Imperial College. Wartime events show that society has recognized the potential of fire as a tool for deliberate destruction and as a mechanism to undermine morale

THE RISK IMPOSED BY FIRE TO BUILDINGSAND HOW TO ADDRESS ITJosé L. Torero11Edinburgh Center for Fire Research, The University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Risk Imposed by Fire to Buildings 43Furthermore, it brought top scientist to recognize this potential and devote their careers to the study of fire. The war effort focused on destruction was thus followed by a peace effort focused on understanding, controlling and preventing fires. In 1956 a Committee on Fire Research was formed bring-ing Professor Ho …… 此处隐藏：42494字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……