Evaluation of the Fire Impact of Cellulose-Based Indoor Building Finishing Materials According to Changes in Room Size Aspect Ratio

Abstract

In modern society, the size of buildings tends to expand due to technological advances. However, while prioritizing performance design and specific building materials, fire research has fallen short of creating a comprehensive fire characteristic database for building materials. This study presents a plan for building a big data resource to evaluate the fire performance of cellulose-based flame retardant building finishing material in buildings of varying sizes. The three types of building finishing materials applied in this study are polyurethane foam, MDF, and cellulose-based building finishing materials. The variables were determined based on the floor area, and the change in floor area was calculated using the aspect ratio, a dimensionless number. Data analysis utilized the Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) to determine the time required to meet life safety standards for temperature, visibility, and Fractional Effective Dose (FED). The results confirm a correlation between the safe evacuation time (ASET) and increasing floor area. Additionally, the study demonstrates that cellulose-based flame-retardant building finishing material effectively maintains safe evacuation times even with increasing floor areas, as evidenced by increases of 41.0 s, 13.2 s, and 97.5 s in temperature, visibility, and FED, respectively.

Keywords

• aspect ratio
• building finishing materials
• life safety criteria
• Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS)