Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

The Hong Kong building code requires a 900 mm spandrel for the purpose of prevention of external fire spread from the floor of fire origin to floors above. A recent real fire in a hotel building demonstrated that the spandrel was not effective in stopping fire spread vertically. Due to natural lighting and architectural requirements, architects in Hong Kong intend to use slab-to-slab full height glazed windows for high-rise residential buildings. Horizontal projections are proposed as an alternative solution to the prescriptive code requirement for fire separation. This paper presents a comparison of spandrel performances on stopping fire spread with the horizontal projections. It was found that the horizontal projection would provide a better performance for fire separation. A CFD package, STAR-CD, was used to simulate the fire scenarios and to justify the design of the horizontal projections.