Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

Fire door would be one of the most important factors for securing building fire safety, which are generally made of thick wood or heavy metal, causing they are subject to be put aside on account of inconvenience to Japanese daily life in spite of cutting down fire performance. The size of fire door in Japan has been enlarging for the attainment of convenience and amenity. From Japanese legal point of view, the area of doors is not included in that of interior finishing, which indicates another increment of fire-growth risk because of decorative finishing of doors. In addition, Japanese approved steel door with plastic surface finishing allows easy ignition and spread of fire to an ambient compartment by its high rate of heat transfer. This paper deals with some legal issues and cost/performance of Japanese fire doors in a MOT (Management of Technology) viewpoint, through several investigations and analyses on commercial products made of wood and/or steel. An operation break-through aimed at innovating cost-performance of a wood fire door is now making its completion mainly focused at cost reduction under considerations of some innovative technologies, which might survive Japanese wood culture or woody daily life and also effective as an example of cost/performance analysis on fire risk.