Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

This note reports experimental fires in a compartment representing a shop with a glazed front. Even when a sprinkler system was installed to control the fire the glass cracked badly and in one case most of it fell out. The experiments show that a drenching system wetting the inside of the glass, together with sprinklers, can effectively protect the window, but there must be a substantial flow of water over all the glass. It is concluded that a conventionally glazed shop front could not be relied on to prevent the bulk flow of smoke into a covered pedestrian mall unless sprinklers and an effective drenching system were installed inside the shop.