Assessing hotel fire hazards with regard for parameters of thermal decomposition of upholstered furniture elements

Introduction. Upholstered furniture in hotel rooms has a fire hazard due to flammable components, such as upholstery fabrics, fillers, and frame elements. However, analysis of fire hazards and their development patterns in hotel buildings disregards flammability properties of upholstered furniture. This can involve an underestimation of toxicological hazards for people in the course of evacuation.
The mission of this work is to assess fire hazards in crowded hotels buildings using mathematical modeling of fire and experimentally obtained information about the thermal decomposition of upholstered furniture.

Research methods. Mathematical modeling was employed to simulate the development of fire hazards in a standard hotel section; fire load values were taken from the database and contributed to the simulation.

Research results and their discussion. Parameters of fire loads, extracted from the database, can cause an underestimation of the effect of toxic gases on humans during evacuation.
Unlike standard combustible loads, emission of a mixture of highly toxic gases, such as carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide and hydrogen chloride, accompanies the thermal decomposition of upholstered furniture elements. Hence, partial density of hydrogen cyanide can reach a critical value before humans can start leaving hotel premises that have no fire sources.
The authors demonstrate that safe evacuation of people is unfeasible, because almost each of the five scenarios involves fire hazards that block evacuation exits from a standard hotel section before humans can evacuate from rooms without fire sources.

Conclusion. It is necessary to obtain relevant data on flammability properties of advanced polymers used to make and take care of upholstered furniture, since the thermal decomposition of such polymers can create a toxicological environment.

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