ANALYSIS OF FIRE CHARACTERISTICS IN APARTMENT BUILDING THROUGH FULL SCALE EXPERIMENT AND ZONE MODEL SIMULATION

Fire characteristics of a typical apartment building in Korea was studied through full scale experiment and zone model simulation. The fire was ignited at the living room and allowed to spread to other parts of a single unit in a five storied apartment building. Various data including temperatures, species concentrations, and images were collected in the experiment. A zone model(CFAST) was used to analyze the same apartment building that represents the average households in Korea. The results were compared with a full scale experiments. While CFAST allows one compartment involved with fire, the experiment allowed the fire to spread to other compartments. Therefore, the comparison between experimental data and Zone-Model data is valid until the living-room fire spread to other parts of the apartment. Flashover occurred at approximately 380 seconds in a fire experiment, and at approximately 420 seconds in Zone-Model. Based on all of data between experimental data and Zone-Model data, it is concluded that the safe escape time is about 250 seconds.