• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.98-105
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• 2016

A fire risk assessment in rack-type warehouse is typically determined based on the following factors: 1. flammability and fire loads for storage of goods, packing materials, and pallet, 2. a ceiling height of warehouse indoor spaces, and 3. height, arrangement, and spacing for storage racks. For appropriately extinguishing and protecting the fire in warehouses, therefore, it is necessary to classify combustibles considering the previously mentioned factors and to develop design Standards for sprinkler system. As the first step to apply automatic sprinkler system to domestic warehouses, this study investigated characteristics for commodity distribution and warehouse configuration using 28 warehouses in five distribution complexes located in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea. In addition, this study analyzed Standards for commodity distribution adopted in USA, Europe, and Japan. Using the field survey analysis, this study was aimed to provide baseline data to prepare for Commodity Classification Standard for warehouses in South Korea.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.345-364
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• 2021

Developments in the understanding of fire behaviour for large open-plan spaces typical of tall buildings have been greatly outpaced by the rate at which these buildings are being constructed and their characteristics changed. Numerous high-profile fire-induced failures have highlighted the inadequacy of existing tools and standards for fire engineering when applied to highly-optimised modern tall buildings. With the continued increase in height and complexity of tall buildings, the risk to the occupants from fire-induced structural collapse increases, thus understanding the performance of complex structural systems under fire exposure is imperative. Therefore, an accurate representation of the design fire for open-plan compartments is required for the purposes of design. This will allow for knowledge-driven, quantifiable factors of safety to be used in the design of highly optimised modern tall buildings. In this paper, we review the state-of-the-art experimental research on large open-plan compartment fires from the past three decades. We have assimilated results collected from 37 large-scale compartment fire experiments of the open-plan type conducted from 1993 to 2019, covering a range of compartment and fuel characteristics. Spatial and temporal distributions of the heat fluxes imposed on compartment ceilings are estimated from the data. The complexity of the compartment fire dynamics is highlighted by the large differences in the data collected, which currently complicates the development of engineering tools based on physical models. Despite the large variability, this analysis shows that the orders of magnitude of the thermal exposure are defined by the ratio of flame spread and burnout front velocities (V_S / V_BO), which enables the grouping of open-plan compartment fires into three distinct modes of fire spread. Each mode is found to exhibit a characteristic order of magnitude and temporal distribution of thermal exposure. The results show that the magnitude of the thermal exposure for each mode are not consistent with existing performance-based design models, nevertheless, our analysis offers a new pathway for defining thermal exposure from realistic fire scenarios in large open-plan compartments.

• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.168-172
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• 2011

The iron frame of building could be collapsed or bent at $500^{\circ}C$. Therefore the fire-resistant paint should be applied for safety. This study performed the comparative analysis to show the characteristics of fireresistant paint. And then 12 products of fire resistant paint and 6 products of paints were used as samples. And the samples were analyzed by TGA (Thermogravimetric Analyzer) as analyzer for measuring the variation of weight on temper of weight by heating. When TGA analyzer could measure the variatiature, and FT-IR was measured for analyze gas components on variation on of weight by heating on 12 products of fire resistance, the samples showed to decrease 40% of weight to $800^{\circ}C$, and because paints had 50% to 40% of loss weight, it showed to be equal with loss weight of fire resistance paint on high temperature or was lower loss weight than it of fire resistance paints. However number 6 sample of fire resistance paints could show to decrease 20% of total weight on $800^{\circ}C$. And then in the case of FT-IR, fire resistance paints could show to have the high intensity of $CO_2$ spectrum as complete combustion. However paints could show to have the lower intensity of $CO_2$ spectrum, have the higher intensity of water spectrum. Therefore the TGA graph of result could be much different until $250^{\circ}C$. When it was burned, FT-IR spectrum could show to confirm the characteristics of fire resistance paints, and the characteristic could be confirmed on inorganic paint of fire resistance by weight loss of TGA.

• Journal of the Society of Disaster Information
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.531-539
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• 2019

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to present the commodity classification method of domestic rack-type warehouse for sprinkler system design. Method: On-site surveys and classification criteria of the NFPA, FMDS, EN and Japan were analysed and ISO 12949 test were carried out with proposed each classification commodity. Result: Based on a heat of combustion, a classification method for extra high, high, medium and low are proposed. Conclusion: Sprinkler design criteria to secure the maximum extinguishing strength for each class of commodity need to be applied.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.53-62
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• 2017

Electric power which is the energy source of economy and industries requires long distance transportation due to regional difference between its production and consumption, and it is supplied through the multi-loop transmission and distribution system. Prior to its actual use, electric power flows through several transformations by voltage transformers in substations depending on the characteristics of each usage, and a transformer has the structure consisting of the main body, winding wire, insulating oil and bushings. A transformer fire that breaks out in substations entails the primary damage that interrupts the power supply to houses and commercial facilities and causes various safety accidents as well as the secondary economic losses. It is considered that causes of such fire include the leak of insulating oil resulting from the destruction of bottom part of bushings, and the chain reaction of fire due to insulating oil that reaches its ignition point within 1 second. The smoke detector and automatic fire extinguishing system are established in order to minimize fire damage, but a difficulty in securing golden time for extinguishing fire due to delay in the operation of detector and release of gas from the extinguishing system has become a problem. Accordingly, this study was carried out according to needs of active mechanism to prevent the spread of fire and block the leak of insulating oil, in accordance with the importance of securing golden time in extinguishing a fire in its early stage. A bushings fireproof structure was developed by applying the high temperature shape retention materials, which are expanded by flame, and mechanical flame cutoff devices. The bushings fireproof structure was installed on the transformer model produced by applying the actual standards of bushings and flange, and the full scale fire test was carried out. It was confirmed that the bushings fireproof structure operated at accurate position and height within 3 seconds from the flame initiation. It is considered that it could block the spread of flame effectively in the event of actual transformer fire.

• International journal of advanced smart convergence
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.82-88
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• 2017

Emergency lights and exit signs are an indispensable part of safety precautions for effective evacuation in case of emergency in public buildings. These emergency sign indicates safe escape routes and emergency doors, using an internationally recognizable sign. However visibility of those signs drops drastically in case of emergency situations like fire smoke, etc. and loss of visibility causes serious problems for safety evacuation. This paper propose a novel emergency light and exit sign built-in with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Beacon to assist the emergency self-guiding evacuation using devices for crisis and emergency management to avoid panic condition inside the buildings. In this approach, the emergency light and exit sign with the BLE beacons deployed in the indoor environments and the smart devices detect their indoor positions, direction to move, and next exit sign position from beacon messages and interact with map server in the Internet / Intranet over the available LTE and/or Wi-Fi network connectivity. The map server generate an optimal emergency exit path according to the nearest emergency exit based on a novel graph generation method for less route computation for each smart device. All emergency exit path data interfaces among three system components, the emergency exit signs, map server, and smart devices, have been defined for modular implementation of our emergency evacuation system. The proposed exit sign experimental system has been deployed and evaluated in real-time building environment thoroughly and gives a good evidence that the modular design of the proposed exit sign system and a novel approach to compute emergency exit path route based on the BLE beacon message, map server, and smart devices is competitive and viable.

• Journal of the Society of Disaster Information
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.148-157
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• 2012

Recently, evacuation safety of building residents becomes the major concern, as the building has been higher and more complicated. Many high-rise multi use buildings are under construction in Korea. Required evacuation time using stairway is longer in high-rise buildings, moreover it is impossible for the disabled to evacuate by using stairway. For this reason the study on the effectiveness of using elevator for evacuation is being progressed. Elevator shaft flow coefficient is the major factor for the calculation of elevator piston effect. The results of this study can be used for the study of elevator piston effect as basic data. The flow coefficient simulation was performed using FLUENT, commercial CFD program. As a result of the flow coefficient simulation, the coefficient is 0.88 considering the safety factor. This result is verified that the result of experimental study, 0.86 is conservative.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.63-73
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• 2019

This study examined the activity of the simulated training scenarios and special rescue crew assuming a chemical accident inside the building. To improve the response ability and safety of rescue personnel in the event of a chemical accident, a total of eight stages of simulated training scenarios were conducted and the activity was measured. As a result of the activity measurement according to the simulation training scenario, the average maximum heart rate of the rescuers was the highest at 177.50 ppm in the 4^th stage, and then 176.67 ppm for the 5^th step, 171.17 ppm for the 2^nd step, 169.33 ppm for the 3^rd step, 162.17 ppm for the 6^th step, 159.58 ppm for the 7^th step, 148.75 ppm for the 8^th step, and 139.33 ppm for the 1^st step. The mean maximum respiratory rate was the highest at 38.17 rpm in the 4^th stage, followed by 37.58 rpm in the 5^th stage, 32.00 rpm in the 6^th stage, 31.58 ppm in the 7^th stage, 31.33 rpm in the 3^rd stage, 31.08 rpm in the 2^nd stage, and 28.00 rpm in the 8^th stage. The 1^st stage was 22.67 rpm. In addition, body water reduction measurements were reduced by up to 0.7 g due to the training intensity.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.42-50
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• 2013

With the rapid change of industry and the development of science and technology, more than 100,000 industrial chemicals are being used and 2,000 new materials are developed every year. Chemical products have had favorable influence on our daily life and contributed very much to the prosper of human culture. But some materials are inherently poisonous and dangerous. Korea ranks as the number 7 in world's chemical products market and the chemical sector is contributing to the economic revival through importing and exporting of the products. With the increasing domestic as well as international interests about REACH and GHS, the need for the effective and efficient chemical material management system is getting bigger and bigger. In this research, we compare the criteria in UN GHS and Safety Control of Dangerous Substances Act of Korea for the development of global standard test methods and the classification and labelling for the chemicals, and suggest an advancement plan for the introduction of the GHS in a building block approach. In addition, providing the harmonized information about chemical hazards is suggested for the elimination of international trade barriers for chemical industries.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.165-172
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• 2019

This study presents the design and manufacture of a self-contained breathing apparatus SCBA wireless communication module with a multipoint simultaneous full-duplex communication system to enable communication between team members wearing the SCBA system. It is necessary for fire-fighters to wear the SCBA system during extinguishing and rescue work at the fire site. Evaluation of the team communication module confirmed the feasibility of communication over more than 500 m in the test condition based on the line of sight. By implementing the Ad-hoc function, it was confirmed that the communication distance could be extended to 128 m by automatic routing up to 3 hoc. The vertical distance inside the building for successful communication was up to the 5th floor in the open staircase and up to the 3rd floor in the partitioned staircase. Furthermore, the performance testing of the communication module assuming a fire situation, confirmed that five team members correctly recognized the standard abbreviation of fire and wireless communication without a separate PTT key operation. In addition, the flame resistance was verified by exposing the module to a flame at 950 ± 50 ℃ for 5 s and then immediately extinguishing the flame.