Proceedings of the Korea Institute of Fire Science and Engineering Conference (한국화재소방학회:학술대회논문집)
- 1997.11a
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- Pages.423-438
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- 1997
APPLICATION OF PERFORMANCED BASED DESIGN IN FIRE PROTECTION ENGINEERING
Abstract
Today's building and fire prevention codes are mostly prescriptive. Prescriptive codes are based on major fires in earlier years that created a need for specific building provision. These codes provide a minimum level of safety. As the general and engineering uses of computers have increased over the years, so has use of computers in the fire protection engineering. This has allowed fire protection engineers to develop alternative approaches to solve today's fire protection problems or to evaluate the performance of a specific fire safety goal. A performance based approach to building and fire codes involves the following: 1) identifying specific goals, such as, safely getting out of the building in 10 minutes, 2) obtain conceptual approval from authorities, 3) define performance level, 4) develop design solutions and identify tools such as, fire tests, models, or methods, to demonstrate that a design will meet the fire protection objective 5) test solutions, 6) present test method and results to the authorities. Some people in the fire protection community consider this to be nothing more than an intellectual exercise, while the others view it as a way to reduce expenses on large project
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