IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v13y2021i16p9193-d615454.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Estimation of Magnitude and Heat Release Rate of Fires Occurring in Historic Buildings-Taking Churches as an Example

Author

Listed:
  • Wen-Yao Chang

    (Department of Architecture, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei 106, Taiwan)

  • Chieh-Hsin Tang

    (Department of Architecture, China University of Technology, Taipei 106, Taiwan)

  • Ching-Yuan Lin

    (Department of Architecture, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei 106, Taiwan)

Abstract

Historical buildings often fail to meet today’s building and fire protection regulations due to their structure and space restrictions. For this reason, if such buildings encounter fire, serious damage will be resulted. The fire of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris (Notre-Dame de Paris) in April 2019 highlights the seriousness of this problem. In this study, the historical building of “Tamsui Church” was selected as an example. The Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) was adopted to analyze the scale of damage and possible hazards when the wooden seats in the church are on fire, and improvement measures were proposed to ensure that such buildings can be used under safer conditions. It was found that the existing seat arrangement will cause the spreading of fire, and the maximum heat release rate is 2609.88 kW. The wooden roof frame above the fire source will also start to burn at 402.88 s (6.6 min) after the fire, which will lead to a full-scale fire. To maintain the safety of the historical building, it is necessary to add active firefighting equipment (smoke detector and water mist system).

Suggested Citation

  • Wen-Yao Chang & Chieh-Hsin Tang & Ching-Yuan Lin, 2021. "Estimation of Magnitude and Heat Release Rate of Fires Occurring in Historic Buildings-Taking Churches as an Example," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(16), pages 1-17, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:16:p:9193-:d:615454
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/16/9193/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/16/9193/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:16:p:9193-:d:615454. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.