WARREN BAKER CENTER FOR SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS- FIRE PROTECTION AND LIFE SAFETY ANALYSIS

This report covers an analysis of the fire protection features within the Warren Baker Center for Science and Mathematics Building. This document first discusses the prescriptive requirements for the building as determined by applicable code. The items to be discussed, as they relate to prescriptive requirements, include the means of egress and relatable components, fire resistive construction, fire alarm system, fire sprinkler system, and smoke control system. All components were analyzed and compared to each applicable code to assess whether these specific fire protection systems were designed correctly. In addition to an analysis of the prescriptive measures in this facility, this report also discussed three specific theoretical performance-based scenarios (design fires). These design fires were created to simulate realistic fires that would test the integrity of the existing fire protection features. The three locations picked for these scenarios were in a large lecture hall vestibule on the first floor, a faculty member’s office on the second floor, and a study area on the third floor. A fire dynamic simulation (FDS) was run on the third design fire in the study area. The simulation created a virtual model of the study room, which included the specified fuel loads, fire sprinklers, and a smoke detector, as detailed in the original fire sprinkler and fire alarm plans. The goal of this simulation was to determine if available safe egress time (ASET) exceeded the required safe egress time (RSET). It was determined that for this specific scenario in the study area, ASET did in fact exceed RSET by 47 seconds. In result of this in-depth analysis and this specific simulated scenario, it was determined that the Baker Science Building is adequately served from a fire protection standpoint. That said, there are some recommendations to be made that could assist advancing ASET throughout. One of these specifically is the smoke control system in the building. While the smoke control system was implemented utilizing a performance-based design by the original architect, it could be said that there is room for additional analysis to ensure that the system implemented is in fact the optimal solution. This thought stems from the fact that the architect does not appear to have taken in account the different effects that varying weather conditions could have on the impact of a passive ventilation system on smoke control in the event of a fire