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Buildings
José L. Torero(&)
1 Introduction
The implementation of fire safety in the built environment has been traditionally a very
prescriptive process. The goal is one of protecting life against the hazard of fire. While
fire safety is directly related to the laws of physics and management of human behavior
in a high-risk situation it implementation is generally perceived as associated to code
compliance. Codes, in turn, incorporate some elements of human behavior and fire
dynamics, nevertheless they are the result of multiple compromises, many of which are
associated to a temporal perception of safety. What was perceived as safe in the past
might not be perceived as safe today. Buildings, are thus constantly being retrofitted so
as to be updated to new code requirements. These code requirements, in turn, are
deemed to provide acceptable level of safety as it is perceived today. The implication is
that compliance means safe and that any building that is not code compliant, to the
current prescriptive requirement, is therefore unsafe and needs to be retrofitted.
Obviously, there is a limit to this approach. Many times, buildings cannot be retrofitted
and therefore codes provide provisions for grandfathering of non-compliant structures
as well as for the use of performance based tools. Grandfathered buildings will never be
perceived as safe and therefore many concessions on their use become necessary.
Performance based design is rarely used as such, and when it comes to historic
buildings, its use is mostly to obtain certain specific equivalencies that allow to
ascertain that certain omissions to the guide are acceptable.
© RILEM 2019
R. Aguilar et al. (Eds.): Structural Analysis of Historical Constructions,
RILEM Bookseries 18, pp. 33–43, 2019.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99441-3_3
34 J. L. Torero
Rg ¼ Pg Cg ¼ Pf Cf Cf ð1Þ
where Rg is defined as the general risk, Pg is the probability of the event and Cg the
consequences. The sub-index “f” corresponds to a fire where Pf 1 and therefore risk
in the event of a fire is purely the management of consequences. This in terms of other
hazards like earthquakes or floods is not common practice. In these fields, the conse-
quences need to be managed but they are generally subordinated to the evaluation of
probability. For other hazards, we design for events of a certain acceptable probability
Understanding Fire Safety of Historical Buildings 35
and therefore we can define loads against which we can evaluate the design (ex. one in
one-hundred-year event). Therefore, performance assessment becomes a natural path.
In the case of fire, the objective is simply to manage the consequences of an event that
will happen but that is unknown in magnitude.
Prescriptive approaches will manage this process by first defining the characteristics
of the event. First, the event will be considered a single accidental fire that will be
placed and defined according to scenarios that are considered possible. For example, if
a building includes a kitchen, a kitchen fire becomes part of the consideration. Multiple
events are excluded by separating them as criminal events (i.e. arson). A designer is
therefore not required to design for multiple events. Many historical monuments have
been destroyed in acts of war by circumventing this assumption [1]. Proactive intro-
duction of multiple events fully dismantles the fire safety strategy [2].
Buildings then are classified as a function of their occupancy. Occupancy not only
defines the use of the building but also defines the type and quantity of combustibles
that will be expected to be present. Statistics have been developed for traditional
occupancies (ex. assemblies, residential, hotels, hospitals, etc.) determining typical
fuels and typical quantities. Thus, by providing a classification the potential fires
against which the countermeasures will be defined are fixed. Codes will define then the
fire growth as a function of tabulated fires. The most common approach is presented in
Eq. (2) [3]:
h i
Q_ ¼ pDHc m_ f Vs t2 ¼ at2 ½kW
00
ð2Þ
where Q_ is the heat release rate and is the primary quantity that characterizes the fire
00
size, DHc (heat of combustion), m_ f (burning rate) and Vs (flame spread rates) are
material properties that define the propensity of a combustible to release energy. “t”
corresponds to the time from ignition and represents the rate of growth. All material
properties are then integrated into a global parameter,, which is then classified. Most
codes will classify materials as sustaining a slow growing fire ð0:0029
a\0:0117½kW=s2 Þ, medium growing fire ð0:0117 a\0:0469½kW=s2 Þ, fast growing
fire ð0:0469 a\0:1876½kW=s2 Þ and ultra-fast growing fire ð0:1876 a½kW=s2 Þ [3].
With the fire classified the attention is directed to the people. The primary objective
of a fire safety strategy is life safety. Thus, the objective is to allow people to evacuate
safely. Given the occupancy, the characteristics and quantity of people will be defined
and thus typical egress times can be established. To guarantee appropriate notification
of the fire so that the onset of egress can be well controlled, building regulations will
require appropriate detection and alarm systems. These systems are consistent with the
occupancy, so while in residential buildings point detectors will alarm the residents and
only the residents, in hospitals, smoke detectors will be connected to alarm systems and
to building managers for a coordinated egress approach. These egress times are called
the Required Safe Egress Time (RSET) [4]. The building will then be designed in a
manner that a fire that follows a certain growth classification will not attain untenable
conditions anywhere in the building before all occupants have evacuated. Tenability is
a difficult to define but in general terms means conditions that make that challenge the
safety and wellbeing of occupants or that are perceived as challenging by occupants.
36 J. L. Torero
Fig. 1. Consequences of a fire (a) a post flashover fire (b) a fire that not reached flashover
(University of Geneva)
Figure 1(b) presents an image of the University of Geneva building after a sig-
nificant fire. In some areas of the building the fire reached flashover damaging objects
but also the fabric of the building. Sectors of the roof were severely damaged and
require complete replacement. Instead, other areas, like those illustrated on Fig. 1(b)
only showed localized damage. Thus, the loss was not complete and many valuable
38 J. L. Torero
elements of the architecture could be cleaned and reconditioned during the 2014
rehabilitation of the building.
Containment and rapid control of the fire will normally enhance life safety pro-
visions beyond what would be required in a conventional compliant building. There-
fore, life safety and property protection need to be addressed together to obtain efficient
solutions.
Compartmentalization is a very important issue when it comes to historic buildings.
Code requirements worldwide will require the use of protected means of egress, this
generally means that emergency stairs need to be provided and these have to be
introduced at predefined maximum egress distances. Emergency egress paths have to
be enclosed by fire resistant construction. The layout of most historic buildings was
defined most times prior to the introduction of maximum egress distances in the codes
(in most countries these requirements appear no earlier than 1920’s [2]). Therefore,
most historic buildings do not have provisions of enclosed stairs. Adding these stairs
generally requires extraordinary interventions. When addressing a historic building, it
is therefore necessary to establish if these enclosed stairs are necessary and what
alternative means and provisions can be used to compensate for the absence of such
enclosures. In a similar manner, corridors many times exceed maximum egress dis-
tances, thus codes will require barriers to break the corridor to guarantee safe egress.
Again, these barriers represent major intrusions and therefore need to be addressed with
some care. The management of smoke to allow for extended travel distances and
unenclosed stairs in a historic build will be used as an example of the type of analysis
required.
Structural integrity and compartmentalization is guaranteed by means of fire
resistance testing. Structural elements and compartmentalization components need to
be tested in a destructive manner to establish their fire resistance. This will generally be
impossible for historic buildings. Structural solutions of historic buildings tend to be
very different from current constructive methods. Therefore, these solutions have never
been tested for compliance and therefore do not represent rated construction. Figure 2
shows examples of structural systems with protection dating to the 19th century.
A system of the nature of Fig. 2(b) will most likely achieve the required fire resistance,
nevertheless it will not be certified (and therefore non-compliant) and will require cover
if the building was to be rehabilitated. Detailed Finite Element Models (FEM) that can
establish structural behavior require as input a temperature distribution [7]. The tem-
perature distribution (and associated heat transfer coefficients) can be obtained using
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models but in most cases (due to the simple
geometries and very different time scales for the heating of solids and gases) much
simpler models can be used [4]. A simple zone model will be illustrated in the next
section [3]. The FEM models can serve to provide a time equivalency for the structure
that defines what the potential fire rating could be for a historical structure. As indicated
above, this is a significant departure from prescriptive methods where performance
assessment of the structure is not required.
A critically important feature of compartmentalization are the doors. Performance
assessment of fire doors requires testing of a door system that includes the door, the
frame, the hinges and all other fixtures. The system needs to protect the safe are from
ingress of fire and smoke. In historic buildings, doors are many times, inherent fixtures
Understanding Fire Safety of Historical Buildings 39
Fig. 2. Historic structural slab (a) photograph of a historic vaulted ceiling (b) Section of a 19th
century protected beam
of the architecture and therefore it is desirable not to intervene to attain a required level
of fire resistance. Figure 3 shows a good example of such doors. The doors come from
the same building at the University of Geneva and during the refurbishment it was
highly desirable not to alter the doors and fixtures. Maintaining these doors requires a
detailed analysis of their capacity to withstand the penetration of smoke and flames. In
general, it is easy to demonstrate that massive timber doors are capable of sustaining
the heat fluxes of a generalized fire for an adequate period. It is much more difficult to
address their capacity to contain smoke. It is very common that minor modifications,
that introduce adequate seals and manage the relative motion between frame and door,
will be required and therefore detailed dialogue with other stakeholders (i.e. architects
and heritage experts) will be necessary.
Fig. 3. Historic doors and detail of fixtures used at the Bastions Building, University of Geneva
Overall, the basic principle of analysis of fire safety for historic buildings implies
the migration from “compliance” to “performance” and the acceptance of a much more
40 J. L. Torero
Fig. 4. Photograph of the Bastions Building before the 1940 renovation work
Fig. 5. Vitreaux in the monumental stair and Aula Magna by Emilio Beretta (1958) and
Alexandre Cingria (1940)
compliance for the corridors in the second floor and compartmentation of all corridors
(they exceed maximum travel distances – 30 m). The proposed solution to compart-
mentalize the corridors is an electrically activated mirror door that is intended to vanish
by reflecting the corridor (as seen in Fig. 6). This solution has a very negative impact
on the internal architecture of the building but also deteriorates circulation during
normal operation of the building. As an emergency solution is not ideal because it relies
on a mechanical device to close the door and compartmentalize the corridor in the event
of a fire. The monumental stair (Fig. 7) cannot be enclosed therefore cannot serve as a
means for emergency evacuation. Thus, alternative egress paths need to be constructed.
Figure 6 shows the proposed alternative. In red are the modifications required. As it can
be seen the addition of external means of egress implies significant alteration to the
façade, which not only delivers a poor-quality egress solution (internal stairs are better
managed) but also represents an unacceptable intrusion on the architecture of the
building.
Fig. 7. Existing building layout (ground floor). Inserted photographs of the egress paths.
The red and black curve correspond to the height of the smoke layer and the
temperature of the smoke layer. The value of “a ¼ 0:00833” which corresponds to a
slow growing fire. The corridors are almost free of combustibles; therefore, a slow
growing fire is an acceptable growth rate. As can be seen from Fig. 8, the smoke layer
will descend to approximately to 3 m from the floor when everyone has already
evacuated (most conservative). This means that people and smoke will not interact.
Furthermore, the temperature of the smoke layer would have not reached 100 °C by
the time everyone has left the building. This is a smoke layer temperature that will still
maintain safe conditions for occupants. This analysis demonstrates that the building
design (i.e. geometry), while not compliant with building regulations, still provides a safe
environment for occupants. Given that occupants can exit without any interaction with the
smoke means that no intervention is necessary. The vitreaux can remain, the mirror doors
are not necessary and the two proposed new means of escape can be omitted.
In a similar manner, a structural analysis was performed to demonstrate that the
building structure offer adequate fire resistance and that the doors were thick enough
that even with extreme charring rates, the doors will withstand an intense fire for
periods much longer than the egress times. So no modifications to the structure are
required nor the replacement of the doors.
4 Conclusions
The solution to fire safety for historic buildings requires a performance assessment to
explicitly demonstrate that the necessary fire safety objectives have been met. In the
case of historic buildings, the fire safety objectives include life safety but also need to
include adequate protection of the patrimony.
References
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of the modern world. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison
2. Knowles SG (2011) The disaster experts, mastering risk in modern America. University of
Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia
3. Karlsson B, Quintiere JG (2000) Enclosure fire dynamics. CRC Press, Boca Raton
4. Hurley MJ, Rosenbaum ER (2015) Performance-based fire safety design. CRC Press, Boca
Raton
5. ASTM-E-119 (2015) Standard Test Methods for Fire Tests of Building Construction and
Materials, ASTM
6. Drysdale DD (2011) An introduction to fire dynamics. Wiley, West Sussexs
7. Wang Y, Burgeass I, Wald F, Gillie M (2013) Performance-based fire engineering of
structures. CRC Press, Boca Raton