Introduction to Fire Safety, Approved Document B (ADB), Fire Engineering and This Course

Introduction

Each year, despite strenuous efforts by many people and organisations and a lot of taxpayers’ money, unwanted fires
still claim many deaths, injuries and millions of pounds of damage. The Grenfell tower fire disaster in June 2017 is a
devastating reminder of the danger of fires. In the UK, it is estimated that fires cause about 1% loss in GDP and
about 300 deaths each year. Whilst the number of deaths is small compared, say to people killed on the roads,
societal acceptance is much lower. Hence, ensuring fire safety is one of the most paramount requirements of
building regulations. Building design and construction have to satisfy requirements of the Building Regulations for
different aspects of the building. In England and Wales (similar provisions are required in Scotland and Northern
Ireland, even though the document references are different), Fire Safety is dealt with in Part B. Structural safety in
Part A. This course introduces to different aspects of Fire Safety, with particular focus on Structural Fire Resistance.

Provision of fire safety is concerned with minimisation of risk of fire losses, in terms of injury and loss of life,
damage to property, business, heritage, environment and any other damage associated with fire. Risk is the product
of probability of fire occurring and consequence of fire. If the probability of fire occurring could be reduced to zero
(i.e. total prevention of fire), then the risk of fire would be zero irrespective of the level of damage should a fire
occur. It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to rule out fire occurring. However, it is possible, indeed
desirable, to reduce the risk of fire occurring, hence reducing the risk of fire. This requires good fire management.
Minimising injury and loss of life requires provision of sufficient time for people to detect fire, recognise fire,
prepare for evacuation and evacuate from place of danger to place of safety before injury and death occurs. This will
influence building design (such as escape routes) and provision of fire protection methods such as fire detectors.
Minimising damage to property, business, heritage, environment requires adequate means of protection. Provision of
fire safety in a building is a complex interaction between building design and construction, management, people and
environment. This makes it very difficult to deal with risk in an explicit way by conducting probabilistic risk
assessment. Instead, fire safety design is mostly conducted in a deterministic way.

For any building to be given permission to be built, it has to satisfy requirements of the Building Regulations. For it
to be used, it has to satisfy requirements of the insurance industry. Both have requirements on fire safety. The
Building Regulations requirements on fire safety are made in the interests of public health and safety and they deal
with the reduction of injury and fatality caused by fire. They do not attempt to deal with financial losses. Reduction
of financial losses from fire is dealt with by insurance companies. Depending on the degree of fire precaution and
fire protection in a building, the insurance premium will change.

Satisfying the fire safety requirements of the Building Regulations and the insurance industry is achieved by a
combination of fire precaution and fire protection. Fire precaution deals with the prevention of fire from occurring
(fire management). This includes such things as public education on the importance of reducing fires (e.g. chip pan
fires), fire load management (e.g. put papers in metal cabinets), separation of combustible materials from ignition
source, effective security patrol around a building etc. Fire protection is the main concern of building engineers (a
broad term used to include structural engineers, architects, building services engineers, civil engineers etc). This
course will address aspects of fire protection.

Fire protection is broadly divided into two parts: active protection and passive protection. In active protection,
additional features are introduced to the building to reduce fire risks. For example, fire detectors, sprinklers are
devices that are active fire protection measures. Fire detectors help detect fire quickly and sprinklers help control
fire size. If active fire precautions are relied upon to provide fire safety to a building, it is important that they achieve
sufficient reliability. The risk of failure of active fire precaution systems should be considered in the fire safety
design of a building. Passive fire protection uses the natural resistance of a building’s fabric to contain fire damage.
Active fire protection may or may not be in a building, and may or may not operate. Passive fire protection is always
there and will always be available if a fire occurs.

Both Building Regulations and the insurance industry may require provision of active and passive fire protection
measures. But their requirements may differ in amounts due to their different emphasis. This course will use
Building Regulations requirements to explain building fire safety provisions.
Introduction to Building Regulations (ADB/BS9999)

Requirements of the Building Regulations are set out in Approved Documents. Fire safety requirements are in
Approved Document B (ADB). This document (two volumes) can be downloaded from
http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/buildingregulations/approveddocuments/partb/bcapproveddocumentsb/. You may
download a copy of this document for self-study aspects of this document. Another set of prescriptive method is in
BS 9999, which is presented in the same format as ADB, but some of the solutions are based on fire engineering
solutions. The last week of this course will provide a detailed introduction to BS9999.

The Building Regulations are concerned with the health and safety of building occupants and others who may be
affected by the building (e.g. passers-by) and to provide assistance to fire fighters.

The Building Regulations require that a building must be constructed so that, in the event of a fire:

 The occupants are able to reach a place of safety.

 It will resist collapse for a sufficient period of time to allow evacuation of the occupants and prevent further
rapid fire spread.
 The spread of fire within and between buildings is kept to a minimum.
 There is satisfactory access for fire appliances and facilities are provided to assist firefighters in the saving of
lives.

Many prescriptive solutions have evolved as response to important historical fire accidents. In this context, the
Grenfell fire in London in 2017 will have huge implications on fire safety regulations. However, it is also important
that there is no knee jerk reaction due to political pressure.

At this point, it should be mentioned that fire safety design, as encapsulated in ADB, is not yet based on engineering
principles. This is because principles of science and engineering, applied to fire, are only recently being understood.
There is still a long way to go before thorough understanding of fire science and engineering is obtained and even
longer to go before a science and engineering based fire safety design method is routinely accepted in practice. Most
of the Building Regulations requirements in ADB are prescriptive rules that are based on past accidents with limited
range of validity. Nevertheless, the conceptual basis of these rules is logical. These rules are simple to use, well
understood by building designers. Their applications have not associated with increase in fire damage.

Nevertheless, there are a number of disadvantages by strictly following these rules, e.g. inflexibility, costly, not
appropriate to modern buildings. In these cases, the fire engineering approach should be applied. This course is an
introduction to aspects of fire engineering, focusing on structural fire resistance which is the main concern of civil
and structural engineers.

This note gives a brief introduction to functional requirements of different aspects of fire safety, followed by a short
introduction to methods that may be used to satisfy the functional requirements (fire engineering methods) and then
a brief outline to contrast how the same requirement is dealt with by the prescriptive approach in ADB.

Means of warning and escape

In the event of a fire breaking out in a building, it is important that there is sufficient time for occupants to evacuate
to place of safety. The functional requirement should be:

Available Safe Escape Time (ASET) > Required Safe Escape Time (RSET).

If time is calculated from the time of fire starting, ASET is the time available until the fire condition becomes
untenable. RSET comprises time of detection, time of recognition, time of preparation and time of evacuation.

The fire engineering approach is based on calculation of these times.

In ADB, time is not considered. Instead, ADB specifies the type of fire detection that should be used and design of
means of escape, e.g. the length of escape route, the number of staircases, the size of steps etc. These specifications
are based on number of occupants and size of the building.

Whilst all these factors specified in ADB will affect calculations of the various times in Fire Engineering solution,
the ADB approach considers some of the aspects in isolation and there is no way of checking whether or not
satisfying ADB requirements would meet the functional requirement of means of escape.

Internal fire spread (linings)

People get injured or incapacitated because of damage by smoke, toxic gases and occasionally high temperatures. To
prolong ASET, it is important that the speed of fire development is as slow as possible; the amount of smoke and
toxic gases produced is as low as possible; the materials are as difficult to ignite as possible; and the spread of
flames (main cause of fire spread) is as small as possible. In the fire engineering approach, these data are
incorporated into calculation models to enable ASET to be calculated, based on different untenability conditions
(e.g. visibility, smoke clear height, toxicity dosage). Controlling fire spread also benefits structural fire resistance.

This is dealt with in ADB through specification of lining materials. It divides materials into different classes, based
on standard fire testing (BS 476 Part 7: method for classification of the surface spread of flame of products). It then
specifies different material classes for use in different locations of building.

It should be pointed out that at present, fire engineering method does the same as ADB on specification of lining
materials because the science of lining material behaviour in fire is not understood well.

Internal fire spread (structure)

Fire should be prevented from spreading out of the initial fire compartment to affect escape of people from other
parts of the building. Fire can spread from the initial fire compartment to other parts of the building in different
ways: refer to the figure below, there are three possible ways that a fire can spread: loss of loadbearing capacity of
the structure, loss of insulation so that temperature rise on the unexposed side rises to cause further ignition and loss
of integrity fire can spread through holes and cracks in the construction. These are the so-called fire resistance
issues.

(a) Load bearing failure (b) Insulation failure (c) Integrity failure
Routes of fire spread through structure

To enable this functional requirement to be fulfilled, it is necessary to understand fire behaviour, heat transfer and
construction performance at high temperatures. These are the main emphasis of this course and will be further
explained.

ADB does not address realistic fires. Instead, a fire is described by the standard temperature-time relationship:

Tf = T0 + 345 log10 (8t+1) (1)

Where t is the furnace heating time in minutes, T f-T0 is the temperature rise in the testing furnace.

This equation gives continuous increase in fire temperature as a function of time. Any connection to realistic fire is
through specification of a time limit, which is referred to as Fire Rating or Fire Resistance Period. In ADB, fire
rating is specified in multiples of 30 minutes. There is a misunderstanding that this is related to the time required for
occupants to escape the building.

The required standard fire resistance rating in ADB depends on building type, building height and whether
sprinklers are used or not.

To design for sufficient fire resistance time, manufacturers of building products carry out standard fire resistance
tests in standard fire resistance furnaces. In the UK, standard fire resistance tests are carried out according to BS 476
Part 20. Other countries have their own different fire testing standards. All standards have almost identical
temperature-time relationships. However, due to different construction of fire testing furnaces, different controls,
different fuel sources (e.g. some furnaces are gas fired while others are oil fired), the same construction element
tested in different furnaces may have different fire resistance ratings.

The standard fire exposure equation in (1) is used to simulate cellulosic fire, where combustible materials are largely
wood based. Usually this standard fire is used in the design of buildings on shore. For the design of offshore
construction where the combustible material is liquid fuel, the following standard hydrocarbon fire exposure is used:

Tf-T0 = 1100*[1 - 0.345exp(-0.167t) – 0.204 exp(-1.417t) – 0.471exp(-15.833t)] (2)

where time is in minutes.

Compartmentation

If a fire occurs, it will spread rapidly within an unconfined space if there is sufficient distribution of combustible
materials. As part of fire resistant design, in order to prevent rapid spread of fire, a building should be divided into a
number of small spaces so that fire damage occurs only within the smaller confined space, i.e. be compartmented.
Fire compartments should be adequately constructed to resist fire spread.

Fire resisting compartment should have sufficient fire resistance rating. In particular, the weakest link in a fire
resisting compartment should have sufficient fire resistance rating.

 at junctions with other compartment walls, external walls and roofs.

 At openings for doors, pipes and ducts of various kinds, refuse chutes and protected shafts.

Division of a space into compartments may affect the cost and appearance of a building, for example, airport or
other large space utilities. Fire engineering design is often used to justify increasing the un-compartmented space.

Concealed spaces

A weak link in the fire compartment and that is not very obvious is concealed spaces within fire resisting
compartment floors and walls. Within a building, fire spread in concealed spaces is even more dangerous because
fire spread is hidden and there is no warning of the impending fire danger.

Cavity barriers should be constructed to a certain standard to achieve the function of preventing fire spread. Cavity
barriers should not have holes except for allowing appropriately installed cables or pipes (e.g. ventilation ductwork).
Acceptable pipes mean that the internal diameter of the pipe does not exceed a limit. Fire dampers should be
installed in pipes to operate automatically once fire is detected.

If there is design tolerance or imperfection within the fire resisting compartment, this should be closed by using fire
stops to prevent fire and smoke spread. Fire stops should not restrict the thermal movement of pipes or ducts and
should be supported by materials of limited combustibility. A variety of materials may be used as fire stops
including: cement mortar, gypsum based plaster, glassfibre, intumescent mastics etc.

External fire spread

Fire can also spread externally through the following routes:

1. Insufficient fire resistance of external walls;
2. Using combustible materials on external walls;
3. Insufficient distance between buildings;
4. Using combustible materials on roofs.

These should be controlled. ADB specifies material classes to deal with issues 2 and 4. Separation distance (issue 3)
is dealt with by specifying minimum building separation distance based on window sizes. Issue 1 is dealt with by
specification of fire resistance rating.

Calculation of building separation distance is almost entirely based on fire science. The main basis of this
calculation is that the incident radiation on a site where a separate building would be built should not exceed 12.6
kW/m2. This is the level of heat flux at which wood based materials may be easily ignited by flying brands. More
detailed information may be found in:

“External fire spread: building separation and boundary conditions, Building Research Establishment Report, 1991”

Access and facilities for the fire service

In order for fire fighting and rescue work to be effectively carried out, the building should be provided with
sufficient access and facilities for the fire service. These requirements are:

(a) in most buildings:

 sufficient means of vehicular access across the site of the building to enable fire appliances to be brought near
to the building for effective use.
 Sufficient means of access for firefighting personnel into and within the building so that they may effect rescue
and fight fire.
(b) In large buildings and/or buildings with basements:
 Sufficient fire mains and other facilities, such as firefighting shafts, to assist firefighters, and
 Adequate means of venting heat and smoke from basement fires.

In theory, if the design and construction of a building consider all eventuality of fire, there is no need for fire
fighting. For example, if a building has been designed to ensure that all occupants can evacuate safety and that the
structure can survive burn-out without collapse, there is no need for fire fighting. However, there is always a risk
that buildings may not perform as designed so fire fighting is always required. Furthermore, at present, there is little
engineering understanding of fire fighting so ADB/BS9999 specifications have to be adhered.

Contents of this course

This course will mainly deal with fire resistance, focusing on understanding fire behaviour, heat transfer and
structural performance under fire condition. For other parts of fire safety, this course will explain the basis of fire
engineering, introducing simple analysis of means of escape based on ASET>RSET.

Formal lectures will cover heat transfer (weeks 2-4), post-flashover fire behaviour (week 5), structural performance
and fire resistance design (weeks 6-9), pre-flashover fire behaviour and simple applications (weeks 10, detector
design, means of escape) and an introduction to prescriptive methods (week 11). Week 12 will be used for revision.
To reinforce the formal lectures, each student should complete an individual piece of coursework carrying out fire
resistance design of a steel framed structure.

Y C Wang
Jan 2023