Date
3-2012
Degree Name
MS in Fire Protection Engineering
College
College of Engineering
Advisor
Chris Pascual and Fred Mowrer
Abstract
This report is a review of the fire protection systems installed in the Christopher Cohan Center on the Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo campus. The systems reviewed are the passive structural fire protection, passive and active egress components, and active detection and suppression systems. The report examines whether the reviewed systems in the building meet the prescriptive requirements of the 2010 California Building Code(CBC) and California Fire Code(CFC). The building will be further subjected to a performance based analysis. Two design fire scenarios are presented, and an analysis of available safe egress time (ASET) is compared with an analysis of the required safe egress time (RSET). Fire Safety Goals Five goals found in building guides such as NFPA 5000 and the SFPE Performance Based Design guides are as follows: 1. “Provide life safety for the public, building occupants, and emergency responders by minimizing firerelated injuries and preventing undue loss of life. 2. Minimize damage to property and cultural resources from fire. 3. Provide for continuity of operations. Minimize undue loss of operations and business-related revenue caused by fire-related damage. 4. Limit the environmental impact of fire from combustion products and release of hazardous materials.” 5. Limit the fire-related damage to buildings and objects of historical and/or cultural significance. The performance section of this report will focus only on the life safety goal as applied to the building occupants. The prescriptive part of the report will determine if the building is compliant with the 2010 CBC and CFC, with respect to fire and egress related systems. If it is, then the first goal is assumed to have been achieved to a degree equivalent to a new building built to prescriptive code with respect to those systems. The report will not address the remaining goals beyond the following: Survey of construction documents to this point have not revealed systems for managing sprinkler discharge or other fire-related environmental hazard mitigation systems. The building is an existing structure without a protected historical status, so goal 5 does not apply.
https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/fpe_rpt/3
Project Presentation
DOI
10.15368/fperpt.2012.2