| Keywords |
Performance Based Design ; Fire & Evacuation simulation ; Available Safety Egress Time ; Required Safety Egress Time ; Evacuation Safety Assessment |
| Abstract |
This study set out to assess evacuation safety according to utilization method through the case analysis of gymnasiums, propose ways to improve smoke exhaust and evacuation performance, and identify elements to consider for performance-based design. 1) In the case of an existing gymnasium, the first- and second-floor seats had a fire risk due to the lowering smoke layer and high-temperature heat. When smoke ventilators are closed, it takes less time for the smoke layer to reach the safe breathing line of 1.8 m and for the temperature to reach the residence limit of 60oC, thus increasing the risk of fire further. 2) As for ways to improve smoke exhaust performance to guarantee the audience's evacuation safety, the area of the existing smoke ventilators should be increased by 200% or more to allow fire smoke to be discharged through the upper smoke ventilators smoothly and to prevent high-temperature heat from spreading from the indoor protective sections to the first- and second-floor evacuation sections to guarantee the audience's evacuation safety. 3) As for ways to improve evacuation performance to resolve stagnation according to the bottleneck phenomenon during audience evacuation, the width of both the audience exits and external exits, which connect the indoor protective sections with the first- and second-floor evacuation space, should be enlarged to relieve the bottleneck phenomenon and guarantee the audience's evacuation safety. 4) It is thus required to expand the area of the existing smoke exhaust facilities or prolong available safety egress time (ASET) by multiplying the number of the facilities in order to increase the evacuation safety of a gymnasium. The audience's evacuation safety can further be enhanced by expanding the width of the existing audience exits and external exits or increasing the number of exits to directly induce the audience evacuation on the second floor or higher to the outside. |