A real fire and the evaluation of its consequences in terms of fire safety

Fires are a disaster that affects general public health all over the world and in our country and has direct and/or indirect effects on human life. A 1/1 scale Fire Experiment Laboratory was built in order to demonstrate the fire disaster with a real fire. There are 2 fire test rooms (dimensions of 300 x 350 cm), one control room (dimensions of 190 x 620 cm) and observation room in our prepared building. The necessary fire loads were calculated and furnished in such a way that one room was the living room and the other room was the bedroom in the fire tests. In the fire load calculation, the bedroom and living room fire index values were found to be 1.18 and 1.86, respectively. After the heat measurement devices, software, thermal camera, indoor furniture, roller blinds, observation room, and arrangement of rooms were completed, the experiments were started. Real fires were started in the living room and then in the bedroom, respectively. During the experiment, all necessary data were obtained with appropriate equipment and the results were evaluated. Instantaneous temperature values were taken for every second in the lower, middle and upper regions of the fire chambers. In the bedroom, the maximum temperatures were 1200 °C in the upper region, 800 °C in the middle region and 400 °C in the lower region, while in the living room it was measured around 900 °C in the upper region, 600 °C in the middle region and 300 °C in the lower region. At the same time, temperature changes outside the building were also recorded. According to thermal camera images, the maximum temperature was found to be approximately 25 to 31 °C on the outer wall of the bedroom, while it was between 41 and 46 °C on the outer wall of the living room. While extreme temperature changes were observed in the room, much more limited temperature changes were detected on the outer surfaces of the walls. 6 different gas measurements were made as Oxygen gas (O%), Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC%) rate, Lower Explosive limit (LEL%) rate, Carbon monoxide (CO, ppm) gas, Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S, ppm) gas, Ammonia (NH3 %) gas in the experiment. The amount of oxygen decreased to 19% in the bedroom and 11% in the living room in oxygen gas measurements. At the lower explosion limit values, no value data was obtained in the bedroom, and the LEL level increased up to 11% in the living room. The CO level in the bedroom reached 500 ppm once, while it reached 500 ppm 3 times in the living room in carbon monoxide gas measurements. While hydrogen sulfide gas (H2S) reached 2.6 ppm in the bedroom, it increased to 13.2 ppm in the living room. Ammonia (NH3) gas was not encountered in 2 rooms. Maximum value of volatile organic compounds (VOC) reached 76 ppm in the bedroom and reached 145 ppm in the living room.