Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Fire Risk in Historic Chinese Temples: A Case in Beijing

ABSTRACT

To analyze the extent of fire risk in historic Chinese wooden structure buildings, the fire load characteristics of a historic temple in Beijing were studied. In this paper, thermogravimetric and cone calorimeter experiments were conducted on raw wood collected from historic Chinese buildings. Based on the experiment results, temple fire experiments were conducted in a full-scale model temple with high fire load in a historic Chinese wooden structure temple. FDS software was used to explore the characteristics of fire growth and spread in the initial fire. The results demonstrated that the pyrolysis kinetics parameters of historical wood were smaller than those of fresh wood. The reference temperature at 150°C with wood density of 410 kg/m³ in wooden structure building fire simulation was relatively credible. Flashovers are more likely to occur in historic wooden structure buildings of lower wood density and pyrolysis parameters.

KEYWORDS:

• FDS
• fire risk
• fire spread
• Historic Chinese Temple
• pyrolysis parameters
• wooden structure

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by Beijing Science and Technology Plan Project–Research and Application Demonstration of Electrical Fire Monitoring and Fire Prevention Technology for Cultural Relics, no. Z171100004417031, China.