Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

Protected lobbies may be stipulated by fire codes to protect openings in compartment walls. Such lobbies will in some cases impair the communication between different parts in a building. In the circumstances, the use of fire shutters may be considered. However, fire shutters available in Hong Kong's market can only provide resistance to fire in terms of integrity. As heat flux can be transmitted by radiation, such fire shutters cannot be regarded as a like-to-like substitution to protected lobbies. This paper is to demonstrate that a double fire shutter system can be an appropriate alternative means of protection to the openings against the spread of flame and heat instead of using lobby. The effectiveness of the double shutter system will depend on the separation between the shutters and the emissivity of the shutters. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) technique is adopted to analyse the influences of the two parameters.