Citation

Chiu SH, Wu C, Chen CY, Lin TH, Lee SK. Buildings (Basel) 2022; 12(10): e1590.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publications Institute)

DOI

10.3390/buildings12101590

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Nursing home residents often have impaired faculties, which limit their evacuation responses in light of accidents. Specifically, fire accidents can pose significant risks to both residents and property. In this study, we designed a water film cooling system to enhance the heat and smoke resistance of a fire retardant curtain without a fire resistance rating. The experimental results on a full-scale door/wall refractory furnace and smoke-barrier system showed that the proposed curtain had 1.5-h heat resistance properties, while the smoke control performance could meet the ISO 5925-1 requirement. Finally, we used Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) 6.0 to simulate an existing nursing home with this type of fireproof curtain setup for horizontal evacuation waiting space. The results show that our proposed water film cooling system can effectively inhibit the diffusion of smoke during the initial stage of a fire, creating a safe evacuation waiting zone for disadvantaged evacuees.

Language: en

Keywords

fire retardant curtain; heat resistance properties; horizontal evacuation waiting space; nursing home; water film system