• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.20 no.1 s.69
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• pp.42-48
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• 2005

The present study investigates the effect of balcony on external smoke movement of high rise building through the fire tests of the 1/10 reduced model scale using Froude scaling. A hexane pool fire is used to examine the smoke movement for various opening sizes of balcony and temperature distributions are measured by T-type thermocouples. Also, hydrogen bubble technique is applied to visualize the smoke movement near the balcony. Measured temperatures of the closed balcony is 2.5 times higher than those of the open balcony because the external smoke in case of the closed balcony rise along the vertical wall. The maximum vertical temperature of partially closed balcony is similar with fully closed balcony and mean temperature inside of balcony increases as opening size of balcony decreases. The experimental results show that the balcony space plays an important roles in preventing fire propagation and cooling of smoke layer. In order to ensure the fire safety in high rise building design, a series of systematic researches are required to examine the various type of balconies.