• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.44-51
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• 2014

Smoke from fire is a mixture of combustion gases and particles which include micro-droplets formed from condensed organic vapors and carbonaceous agglomerates. The inhalation of smoke particles causes adverse health effects, and it is prerequisite for the hazard and risk analysis of the smoke particles to know how they behaviour in the respiratory tract. The characteristics of the absorption and adsorption of toxic gases and the amount and location of the particle deposition within the respiratory tract that determine the adverse health effects are related to the morphology and the size distribution of smoke particles. In the present work, as a preliminary study for the adverse health effects of smoke particles, the morphologies of the smoke particles from combustible materials were investigated for each fire stage: smouldering, well-ventilated flaming, small under-ventilated flaming, fully-developed under-ventilated fire. The steady-state tube furnace method given in ISO/TS 19700 was used for the generation of smoke particles. The fire stages were controlled by changing furnace temperature and equivalent ratio. The morphologies were analyzed by using Transmission Electron Microscope (Bio-TEM) by collecting the particles on TEM grids put on each stage of a cascade impactor.

• Journal of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2017

The purpose of this study was to identify the effects of a hands-on training regarding maritime safety including abandon ship and fire-fighting as related to sea survival, fire-fighting knowledge and emergency response leadership in seafarers engaged on a seagoing ship. The study was conducted with a nonequivalent control group pre-posttest design. Two hundred-sixty-six participants were assigned to either the experimental group(128) or control group(138). The hands-on training regarding maritime safety included sea survival and fire fighting drill, and it was implemented with the experimental group for two days from July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2016. Data was analyzed using chi-square, t-test and ANCOVA by using IBM SPSS Statistics(version 24) program. The experimental group who had the hands-on training showed significantly higher sea survival knowledge(F=902.32, p<.001), shipboard fire-fighting knowledge(F=1013.76, p<.001) and emergency response leadership(F=1802.62, p<.001) for maritime safety compared with the control group who had traditional education. The results indicate that a hands-on training is an effective teaching method to improve sea survival, fire-fighting knowledge and emergency response leadership in seafarers engaged. Further study is needed to identify the effect of a hands-on training regarding maritime safety according to the environmental changes of seafarers.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.80 no.6
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• pp.701-709
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• 2021

The paper aims at improving the understanding and mitigating the effects of tunnel fires that may breakout due to the burning fuel and/or explosion within the tunnel. This study particularly focuses on the behavior of the commonly used horse shoe geometry of tunnel systems. The problem has been obtained using an adequate well-established program incorporating the Lagrangian approach. A transient-thermo-coupled static structural analysis is carried out. The effects of radiation and convection to the outer walls of the tunnel is studied. The paper also presents the impact of the hazard on the structural integrity of the tunnel. A methodology is proposed to study the tunnel fire using a model which uses equivalent steel sheet to represent the presence of reinforcements to improve the computational efficiency with adequate validation. A parametric study has been carried out and the effect of suitable lining property for mitigating the fire hazard is arrived at. Detailed analysis is done for the threshold limits of the properties of the lining material to check if it is acceptable in all aspects for the integrity of the tunnel. The study may prove useful for developing insights for ensuring tunnel fire safety. To conduct such studies experimentally are tremendously costly but are required to gain confidence. But, scaled models, as well as loading and testing conditions, cannot be studied by many trials experimentally as the cost will shoot up sharply. In this context, the results obtained from such computational studies with a feasible variation of various combinations of parameters may act as a set of guidelines to freeze the adequate combination of various parameters to conduct one or two costly experiments for confidence building.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.41-48
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• 2001

Halogen-based fire suppressing agents have been the most effective fire suppressants and widely used for flammable liquid and electric fire. However they have environmental problems causing stratospheric ozone depletion and globe warming. As a substitution of halon, fire suppression system using fine water mist is one of an effective fire suppressant. Suffocating and cooling effects of water mist are increased by the evaporation characteristics because it has droplet size less than 1,000 $\mu{m}$ and very large surface area. In this study, the extinguishing characteristics of fire was measured with changing of water mist droplet size, flow density; discharge pressure, and fire size. As a result, the extinguishing time of pool fire was shortened with the increase of flow density and in case of low flow density less than 0.5$\pm$0.05 ml/$\textrm{cm}^2$ . min, the extinguishing time was shortened with the increase of droplet size. The cycling discharge was effective for $\eta$-heptane pool fire, and total amount of water mist required to extinguish fire was reduced to a quarter compare with continuous discharge.

• International Journal of Concrete Structures and Materials
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.209-220
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• 2012

Post-earthquake fire (PEF) can lead to a rapid collapse of buildings that have been partially damaged as a result of a prior earthquake. Almost all standards and codes for the design of structures against earthquake ignore the risk of PEF, and thus buildings designed using those codes could be too weak when subjected to a fire after an earthquake. An investigation based on sequential analysis inspired by FEMA356 is performed here on the immediate occupancy (IO), life safety (LS) and collapse prevention (CP) performance levels of two portal frames, after they are pushed to arrive at a certain level of displacement corresponding to the mentioned performance level. This investigation is followed by a fire analysis of the damaged frames, examining the time taken for the damaged frames to collapse. As a point of reference, a fire analysis is also performed for undamaged frames and before the occurrence of earthquake. The results indicate that while there is minor difference between the fire resistances of the fire-alone situation and the frames pushed to the IO level of performance, a notable difference is observed between the fire-alone analysis and the frames pushed to arrive at LS and CP levels of performance and exposed to PEF. The results also show that exposing only the beams to fire results in a higher decline of the fire resistance, compared to exposing only the columns to fire. Furthermore, the results show that the frames pushed to arrive at LS and CP levels of performance collapse in a global collapse mode laterally, whereas at the IO level of performance and fire-alone situation, the collapse mechanism is mostly local through the collapse of beams. Whilst the investigation is conducted for a certain class of portal frames, the results confirm the need for the incorporation of PEF into the process of analysis and design, and provide some quantitative measures on the level of associated effects.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.589-603
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• 2020

This paper presents an investigation of the thermal performance of composite floor slabs with profiled steel decking exposed to fire effects from floor. A detailed finite-element model has been developed by representing the concrete slab with steel decking under of it and steel beam both steel parts protected by intumescent coating. Although this type of floor systems offers a better fire resistance, passive fire protection materials should be applied when a higher fire resistance is desired. Moreover, fire exposed side is so crucial for composite slab systems as the total fire behaviour of the floor system changes dramatically. When the fire attack from steel parts, the temperature rises rapidly resulting in a sudden decrease on the strength of the beam and decking. Herein this paper, the fire attack side is assumed from the face of the concrete floor (top of the concrete assembly). Therefore, the heat is transferred through concrete to the steel decking and reaching finally to the steel beam both protected by intumescent coating. In this work, the numerical model has been established to predict the heat transfer performance including material properties such as thermal conductivity, specific heat and dry film thickness of intumescent coating. The developed numerical model has been divided into different layers to understand the sensitivity of steel temperature to the number of layers of intumescent coating. Results show that the protected composite floors offer a higher fire resistance as the temperature of the steel section remains below 60℃ even after 60-minute Standard (ISO) fire and Fast fire exposure. Obtaining lower temperatures in steel due to the great fire performance of the concrete itself results in lesser reductions of strength and stiffness hence, lesser deflections.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.23-28
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• 2013

In order to improve extinguishing performance of water mist, many studies of additives have been conducted. In this study, viscosity agent which has the ability to improve extinguishing performance by adhering to the surface on fire was used and fluorine-free surfactant was also added to water to enhance water's wetting ability. This study aimed to verify optimal concentration of extinguishing of additives according to fire source and extinguishing performance by comparison with pure water. In case of wood crib fire, the results show that flame suppression and extinguishing time of sodium alginate 0.4 wt.% are 3.4 times and 2.2 times shorter than those of pure water in 0.2 MPa respectively. It seems that large amount of water adhere to surface on fire, thus cooling effect on surface was enhanced. Also water consumption of sodium alginate 0.4wt.% is up to 65% lower than that of pure water. In case of heptane fire, extinguishing time of cocobetaine 0.1 wt.% is 9.7 times shorter than that of pure water in 0.2 MPa. It is thought that because cocobetaine can block oxygen and suppress oil mist by making emulsion film on fire surface due to a low surface tension. On the other hand, water consumption of cocobetaine 0.1 wt.% is 92% lower than that of pure water.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Combustion
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.53-58
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• 2013

Lots of Coal power plants (about 30) using bituminous coals are being run in Korea. The use of high volatile low grade sub-bituminous coal is increasingly extended because of imbalance between the worldwide coal supply and demand. Mill-fire has been an important issue since the use of such sub-bituminous coal. In existing coal plants of Korea, shutdown of coal and air supplies could be only a way, and an alternative has not been found in suppressing the mill fire. The inside fowfield in the mills has a highly fuel-rich, low temperature, and high velocity and non-reactive such that it could be a nonreactive system essentially. Nevertheless, occasional fire-occurrence could be attributed to the existence of an ignition source. However it has not been so far investigated in detail. The current work has a focus on suppressing the mile fire via some parametric experimental study such as effects of temperature, residence time, ignition source, and inert gas mixing. The results show that an small amount of $CO_2$- or $N_2$-mixing with air is very effective in suppressing fire formation even at high temperatures or flying sparks. The results suggest that exhaust gas recirculation into the mill should be an alternative to suppress mill fire.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Hazard Mitigation
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• v.4 no.1 s.12
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• pp.57-64
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• 2004

Recent abnormal weather condition and accompanying increase in forest fire require more study on the effect of forest fire on the stability of mountain slopes. The aims of this paper are to investigate how destroy of trees caused by forest fire influences the stability of mountain slopes and to propose a safety evaluation method for mountain slopes considering the effect of forest fire, in order to minimize the expected damage due to forest fire. To accomplish this aim, the effects of forest fire on the stability of mountain slopes are analyzed in quantitative way, and a slope stability chart is proposed as a result.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.191-208
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• 2009

Observations from experiments and real fire indicate that restrained steel beams have better fire-resistant capability than isolated beams. Due to the effects of restraints, a steel beam in fire condition can undergo very large deflections and the run away damage may be avoided. However disgusting damages may occur in the beam-to-column connections, which is considered to be mainly caused by the enormous axial tensile forces in steel beams resulted from temperature decreasing after fire dies out. Over the past ten years, the behaviour of restrained steel beams subjected to fire during heating has been experimentally and theoretically investigated in detail, and some simplified analytical approaches have been proposed. While the performance of restrained steel beams during cooling has not been so deeply studied. For the safety evaluation and repair of steel structures against fire, more detailed investigation on the behaviour of restrained steel beams subjected to fire during cooling is necessary. When the temperature decreases, the elastic modulus and yield strength of steel recover, and the contraction force in restrained steel beams will be produced. In this paper, an incremental method is proposed for analyzing the behaviour of restrained steel beams subjected to cooling. In each temperature decrement, the development of deformation and internal forces of a restrained beam is divided into four steps, in order to consider the effect of the recovery of the elastic modulus and strength of steel and the contraction force generated by temperature decrease in the beam respectively. At last, the proposed approach is validated by FE method.