Date
3-2016
Degree Name
MS in Fire Protection Engineering
College
College of Engineering
Advisor
Frederick Mowrer and Christopher Pascual
Abstract
The main fire protection disciplines ‐ Egress Analysis and Design, Fire Detection, Alarm and Communication Systems, Water‐based Fire Suppression Systems and Structural Fire Protection ‐ are covered in this report.
For Egress Analysis and Design, the California Polytechnic State University’s Engineering IV building was analyzed and covered in the first portion of this report. The building was analyzed against the 2015 edition of NFPA 101 and the 2015 edition of the International Building Code. It is a typical university engineering building with classrooms, professors’ offices and some laboratories. The occupancies, the occupant load, exit widths, exit lengths and number of exits were all reviewed against the code requirements. The building mostly met the code requirements. Then, the information used for the prescribed requirements was used to calculate the egress times from the facility to find it had acceptable times to evacuate.
The California Polytechnic State University’s Engineering IV building was also reviewed for the Structural Fire Protection requirements. The structure was reviewed against the code of record for the facility which is the 2000 edition of the International Building Code and the 2001 edition of the California Fire Code. The building was constructed as a Type II‐A facility which meets the code requirements for this type of facility and the required fire barriers were in the correct locations to delay and/contain fire spread to allow safe egress from the facility. Then, the fire resistance time was calculated to determine if the construction met the required fire resistant time for the facility. The way the building was constructed exceeded the required fire resistant time.
A warehouse facility in Amarillo, TX was analyzed for Fire Detection, Alarm and Communication System requirements. The facility was reviewed against the requirements in current editions of NFPA 72, NFPA 90A and NFPA 101. Most of the facility met the prescribed requirements in the codes but a couple of areas did not. Then, the activation time of the sprinklers was calculated and the performance of the horns and strobes was calculated to see if the current locations met the performance‐based requirements. There were a couple of areas that met the prescribed code requirements but would not meet the performance‐based requirements, as well as, areas that would need slight adjustments to meet the performance‐based requirements.
For the Water‐based Fire Suppression Systems analysis, a suppression system was designed for a Costco to meet the requirements from the 2013 edition of NFPA 13 with the water supply given since there wasn’t a current suppression system design. Then, the information from the Costco was used to calculate the egress time from the facility. The calculated egress time was compared to the smoke and temperature levels at head height to determine if the occupants would have enough time to egress safely for three different fire scenarios. For all three scenarios, the smoke level reach head height at the exits before the facility was completely evacuated.
https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/fpe_rpt/57
Final Presentation
DOI
10.15368/fperpt.2016.6