Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

A comprehensive survey of sprinkler systems in high-rise office buildings was carried out to determine the reliability of various components of such systems in Australia. Based on the survey data, a fault tree analysis (FTA) has been used to estimate the overall reliability of these sprinkler systems. Data from twenty three buildings were collected and are presented in this paper. The analyses are confined only to wet-pipe systems, as these constitute the vast majority of automatic sprinkler systems in Australia and New Zealand. A range of reliability for the sprinkler systems is estimated based on number of considerations. Sprinkler zone shut off during tenancy changes and sprinkler head failure appear to be the main factors that may lead to a sprinkler system failure.