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Fire effects are crucial in the evacuation procedure as fire and its products
can severely impair the evacuees and even cause total incapacitation or
fatalities. Therefore, the assessment of these effects on the agents is vital
from the human safety point of view. Generally speaking, when evaluating
the consequences of fire effluent to human life, the crucial criterion for life
safety is that the time available for escape should be greater than the time
required. The time available for escape is the interval between the time of
ignition and the time after which conditions become untenable such that
occupants can no longer take effective action to accomplish their own
escape. Untenable conditions during fires may result from:
The approach is based on the concept of Fractional Effective Dose (FED) for
toxicity and heat.
Toxicity
( )
FED IN = FED CO V CO 2 + FED O 2
t 2 K [ CO]1.036
FED CO = t
D
t1
Table 1
Values of constants K and D for different activity levels
Activity K D
At Rest 2.81945*10(-4) 40
Light Work 8.29250*10(-4) 30
Heavy Work 1.65850*10(-4) 20
exp(0.1903 % CO 2 + 2.0004 )
V CO 2 =
7 .1
Where %CO2 is the percentage of CO2 in the evaluated compartment.
Oxygen (O2) depletion is also a result of fire and it is capable of causing
human hypoxia and hence incapacitation. The effects of low oxygen are
dependent on both the concentration and the exposure time. For oxygen
concentrations between 20.9% and 14.4% per volume, no significant effects
are observed apart from slight loss of exercise tolerance. Slight effects on
memory, mental task performance and reduced exercise tolerance are
expected at concentration in the range of 14.4% to 11.8% of O2 in air. At
11.8% to 9.6%, severe incapacitation and loss of consciousness can occur,
while between 9.6% and 7.8% also loss of consciousness and death are
expected. The FEDO2is calculated as follows:
t2 t
FED O 2 =
t1 exp[8.13 0.51 (20.9 % O 2 )]
where (20.9 - %O2), is the percent O2 vitiation over the time increment t.
Hyperthermia
Body surface burns
Respiratory tract burns
For use in the modelling of life threat due to heat exposure in fires, it is
necessary to consider only two criteria:
t2 t
FED Heat = 1 + 1
t1 conv rad
t t
where, Trad (in min) is the time to burning of skin due to radiant heat. The
tenability limit for exposure of skin to radiant heat is approximately 2.5
kW/m2. Below this incident level exposure can be tolerated for 30 minutes
or longer without significantly affecting the time available for escape. Above
this threshold, the time to skin burning due to radiant heat decreases rapidly
according to the following equation
(4 / 3)
t rad = 1.333 q rad
t conv = K 1T K 2
References: