Study On Performance-based Fire Protection Design Of Large Shopping Centre

This dissertation is a candidary of Master Degree focusing on to study performance-based fire protection design and assessment of large shopping centre. There are more casualties and heavier economic loss caused by fires of shopping centre than by any other kind of fires. Casualties are high of shopping centre fires happened occasionally. Not only peoples' daily life is affected but also economic development and social stabilization is badly shaked by the severe fires.The significance of this dissertation is to reduce casualties in fires and protect social stabilization and keep sustaining development of social economy through the study on performance-based fire protection design and assessment of large shopping centre.A series of problems on fire simulation of performance-based fire protection design and assessment of large shopping centre are studied such as fire load, fire scenarios, heat release rate, smoke evacuation and air supply, author's experience of application of fire development model FDS (Fire Dynamics Simulator) and CFAST (Consolidated Model of Fire Growth and Smoke Transport) and indeterminate question analysis etc.Also a series of problems on performance-based fire protection design and assessment of large shopping centre for the crowd evacuation simulation are studied such as human psychology and behavior in fires, design crowd value in business halls, criterion of crowd safety evacuation, brief introduction crowd evacuation model, especial ESAFETY (Electronic Evacuation Simulation & Safety) and its principle and indeterminate question analysis of human behavior etc.According as the research on performance-based fire protection design and assessment in chapter 2 and 3, a large shopping centre case is studied in chapter 4 by applying FDS, CFAST and ESAFETY simulation software. The conclusion is that large shopping centres, which are often beyond present fire protection codes, are only applied to performance-basedperformance-based fire protection design and assessment. The performance-based fire protection design and assessment is more scientific, safe and economical. Through the performance-based fire protection design and assessment, the shopping centre can be reduced investment and increased applied area and boosted prominently their economic and social effect.