Introduction to Life Safety Analysis, ENFP Course, A. James Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland

ENFP 250 - Introduction to Life Safety Analysis (3 credits)

Smoke movement through a building that may be used for tenability analysis.

Prerequisite:

Textbook:

Course Description:

Introduction to fire protection engineering and building regulation, building safety systems, and egress system design. Evacuation modeling. Human behavior in fires. Tenability analysis.

Course Objectives:

Understand the discipline of FPE, including roles / relationships of interested parties.
Develop an understanding of fire phenomena, including ignition, fire growth and enclosure effects.
Understand the roles / features / elements of systems used to mitigate fires in buildings.
Be able to perform life safety analyses.

Topics Covered:

Introduction: What is Fire Protection Engineering?, Organizations involved in FPE, “The fire problem” / Major fires, Building codes / standards / regulations, Building fire safety concepts / systems.
Life Safety: Overview of the Life Safety Code, Occupancy / hazard classifications, Prescriptive / performance-based approaches.
Means of egress: Means of egress components, Occupant loads / egress system capacity, Ergonomics / reliability of means of egress, Illumination of means of egress, Alarm notification requirements, Special requirements for places of assembly.
People movement: Principles of people movement, Human behavior in fire, Performance-based evacuation analysis, Performance-based evacuation models.
Tenability analysis: Smoke layer descent, Visibility through smoke, Smoke concentrations, Fractional equivalent doses.
Review literature and analyze a fire of current or historical interest in the profession for a semester project, such as the fires at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.