Study Of Fire Cause And Investigation Method For Home Appliance

Fire caused by home appliance becomes a common issue. However, domestic as well as international research in this area is non-systematic and inadequate. Here this paper attempts to analyze electrical principles, structural features and fire-prone factors of home appliances. To help the accident investigators to understand the principles and features of the occurrence of home appliance fire and to develop general methods and working ideas for investigations, this paper will also research and review the investigation methods to facilitate investigators to identify causes of home appliance fire. Major works and conclusions described in this thesis are summarized below: 1. Base on the risk analyses on popular and fire-prone appliances such as air conditioner, refrigerator, washer, television and water heater, etc., results from research by experts world-wide together with our own experience of investigating fire accidents, this paper reviews and presents research results on causes of fire and the investigation methods. We propose several major factors which lead to most of the accidents of home appliance fire. These factors include flaws in design, failures of components, environmental conditions and improper operations. 2. Based on illustrations of actual fire cases and results obtained by using analytical techniques such as metallurgical method, by explaining the investigation methods and steps on the above seven types of home appliances in five different categories, the author concludes and summarizes the general method and procedure as followed: determine the location of fire origin based on the fire site scenario including of burning mark, sootiness mark, tumble mark, concrete feature and mark on the electric circuitry, obtain appliance pre-fire or on-fire power-on evidences based on the analysis of the appliance near fire spot and the wiring feature of its power supply, observe the flaming feature of the appliance and that of the nearby flammables to determine the fire origin and failure spot of the appliance, which helps to primary locate causes of the fire, apply available analytical techniques including metallurgical method to verify and confirm the causes when it is necessary , always emphasize the importance of inquiries and ensure the logic relationship between the results of inquiries and the determined fire causes.