Statistical Approach to Study the Fire Performance of Building Facades: Towards Optimum Design

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This project aims to identify what design factors affect fire hazard in building facades, and to quantify these effects if possible. The initial step was to search the current literature on fires in facades and facade design to identify which factors could have an effect on fire hazard. We then searched for as many sources of facade fire data as possible. We looked at previous experiments in the literature, industrial safety tests, and real facade fires. We then designed a database that could compare the essential elements of as much of this data as possible, and that could be easily extended to more data in the future. These steps have all been completed. We are now using statistical techniques to try and identify which design factors have the largest impact on the fire safety of facades. We then hope to be able to combine this statistical analysis with the current physical knowledge of facade fires to create a predictive model that could quantify the relative fire safety of different facades. If we are successful, this could then be used to help optimise fire safety alongside other important aspects of facade design - such as insulating ability or weight. This work represents the first time such a large amount of facade fire data has been collated, and one of the first examples of any fire test database in the fire safety literature. This project is also novel in considering fire safety in facade optimisation, as previous efforts have mainly focused on cost versus environmental sustainability (e.g. CO2 emissions). Facade fires are a growing problem, and have cost many lives across the globe. We hope that this project takes some significant steps in reducing the number of the fires that could occur in the future.