• KIEAE Journal
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.21-28
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• 2009

In apartment buildings, casualties, especially fatalities have occurred in balcony areas in fires if residents fail to escape to the main entrance. Potential consequences of a particular infrequent event should be considered. In attempting to design apartment buildings for fire safety, alternative escape methods such as vertical penetration could be considered. The purpose of this study is to investigate present building regulations regarding apartment buildings and examine pros and cons of the current escape method and alternative escape methods. Focus group interview was conducted to discuss problems of fire escape methods. In addition, questionnaires were distributed to field professionals working in architecture, construction and related industries. Among 500 questionnaires distributed, 192 questionnaires were collected. Usable 162 questionnaires were analyzed using SPSS 15. Regarding alternative fire escape methods, several concerns were mentioned. Safety, privacy, security, effectiveness of escape, water proof problems were raised. Based on the opinions, vertical penetration between apartment unit appeared more safe, secure, effective than horizontal penetration. However, both methods have its own pros and cons under specific contexts. Alternative escape methods need be considered for a selective options for residents in case of fire.

• Proceedings of the Korea Institute of Fire Science and Engineering Conference
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• 1997.11a
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• pp.413-422
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• 1997

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.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2017.05a
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• pp.144-145
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• 2017

Korean apartment buildings have been manhattanized and enlarged, but it caused increase of fire accidents. Fire accidents such as Uijeongbu apartment fire(2015), and Ssangmoon apartment fire(2016) caused many deads because of a lack of emergency exit route awareness. Follow to advanced research, conducted suervey on fire safety awareness. On this study, it will present the basic data based on the result of the survey to secure the life.

• Journal of the Korean housing association
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.133-141
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• 2007

The purpose of this study is to secure an evacuation time and to ensure safety by using an Ubiquitous Sensor Network computing when a fire breaks out at a super high-rise apartment housing. A super high-rise apartment housing that is a type of building to solve the problem of separation of the urban function and the phenomenon of hollowing out downtown has been on the increase, high-rise apartment housings occupying 52.7% of whole housings in 2005. However, if a fire breaks out, there would be serious damage since it accommodates many people and facilities as existence of vertical gigantism in the city. The architectural law in force has no clause on it which is universally applicable to general building, it is difficult to be applicable to a densely super high-rise apartment housing and there would be in danger of a resident's evacuation in the fire. Therefore, as a previous study to introduce an USN-based fire-warning facility and evacuation equipment, this study shows the improvement way after analyzing factors that are barriers to evacuaee's behavior of a super high-rise apartment housing and also shows establishment of the grade of vertical evacuation rank by SimuleX, one of the best computer simulation program.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.120-129
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• 2009

Identification of the exact cause of a building fire is generally difficult, because the source and initially ignited objects are often severely damaged or even lost during the early stages of the fire. We made an experimental attempt to reasonably estimate the burning during the very early stages of a fire, and identify its source and causes. The case we studied was an apartment fire, which occurred in Tokyo, in July 2002. The fire was extinguished just after flashover, and the on-site investigations suggested the fire started from the TV and TV stand, which had been damaged so severely that it was difficult to conclude that the TV was the ultimate cause of the fire, simply from the on-site investigation. We conducted a series of burn tests using a TV and other products identical to those actually used in the apartment. Tests were set-up and procedures were carefully studied to recreate the conditions of the articles that remained, and of the room itself. The tests demonstrated that the conditions in the apartment could be recreated only when the fire started inside the TV and came into close contact with dresser.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.13-21
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• 2000

Apartment buildings have teen increasing it's height since first appearance in the late 1970 in Korea. Likewise, fire risk and the fire damage of this new dwelling type have become a serious problems. However the applying fire safety design method and regulations are minimum level of requirements based on the current fire codes. The purpose of this study is to figure out the evacuation characteristics in high-rise apartment buildings and improve countermeasure by comparison egress codes between Korea, Japan and U. S. A. The result shows that means of egress of this dwelling should be reviewed by the fire code as well as expected evacuation safety performance by a fire protection engineer to minimize fire 1osses including life safety.

• Proceedings of the Korea Institute of Fire Science and Engineering Conference
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• 1996.11a
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• pp.10-14
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• 1996

Followings are the analysis of 578 fire accidents occurred at Specific Building In 1995. Fire frequency had been slightly decresed since 1992. In regional, fire accidents in Seoul and Ulsan were higher than the average. Occupational fire frequency order was apartment, factory, buildings over six stories and market place. In addition, the order of life loss was buildings over six stories, apartment and factory. And property loss totaled six times higher than that of Fire Department. Among the causes of fire, electrical fire formed 44.8%, from which we can assume that there were some problems in the investigation of fire causes.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.75-83
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• 2001

It has been recognized that the evacuation planning is very important for effective evacuation of occupants on fire event. However the present evacuation planning and regulation for fire safety usually tend to meet the minimum requirements based on the existing laws and regulations. The ultimate goal of the evacuation planning is evacuate occupants rapidly from building fires to the safe areas. In this study, First, analyzed occupants load density and occupants characteristics in high-rise apartment buildings, Second, A evacuation safety performance of high-rise apartment buildings was analyzed with various typical floor plans. The purpose of this study is to figure out the evacuation characteristics in high-rise apartment buildings and improve countermeasure through comparative study on the Evacuation regulation and floor plans for High-rise Apartment buildings.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.127-135
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• 2011

In this study, we assumed the kitchen fire raising the highest fire rate in apt. and analyzed the fire risk to use CFD in order to estimate the problem of evacuation equipment and the fire vulnerability of 16 or fewer storey apartment. Fire occurring in the kitchen is expended to the livingroom and other rooms. We analyzed that the temperature effected by heat was more than $60^{\circ}C$ after 90 sec in the entrance of apartment unit. If fire is early recognized by men and men don't escape in time, it have too huge demage to block the exit. When the evacuation equipment suggested in this study was installed in order to solve the problem of evacuation equipment, we analyzed that it was estimated more than safe in safety evaluation by heat and heat flux.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.67-75
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• 2018

To reduce the number of casualties in the case of fire, an alarm sound needs to be delivered to the people who remain in the apartment unit. On the other hand, it was reported that the fire alarm sound generated in the elevator hall was not delivered sufficiently to the people staying in the apartment units. In this study, the background noise level and noise level generated in an apartment unit were measured during the day and night time. In addition, the transmission of the fire alarm sound into the each room of apartment units was simulated and compared with the background noise level. The fire alarm sound generated in the elevator halls was reduced by the fire door and doors, and was not transmitted sufficiently into the internal spaces of the apartment units. Starting evacuation action was difficult after hearing the fire alarm sound generated outside the apartment units. To improve the transmission of an alarm sound to the inner spaces of apartment units, an acoustic simulation was carried out for cases where the alarm sound generator was installed on a wall-pad in the living room and the alarm sound generator was installed on the ceiling of each rooms in apartment units. Background noise of + 15 dB and 75 dB (A) were satisfied when alarm sound generator was installed on the ceiling of each room.