| A critical study on the fire safety in big hotels in Hong Kong was carried out in this thesis. Local codes on fire safety issued by the Fire Services Departmen reviewed on the fire services installations (FSI) required and the codes from the Buildings Department were studied. Hotel licensing requirements by the local Home Affairs Department were introduced.; The total fire safety concept was found to be very important to hotel staff and guests. On the hardware side, the active fire protection systems commonly adopted by firemen in fire fighting against fires in hotel were analyzed critically. Another hardware component, the passive fire protection systems were studied. To most of the hotel operations, the software component, namely a proper fire safety management scheme, is often regarded as more important in international chain hotels.; Safety concerns in kitchens were analyzed. Full-scale burning tests in a sample kitchen were performed. The action of active fire systems such as sprinkler and water mist systems were assessed. In addition to the heat release rate, maximum temperature and fire extinction time were examined and analyzed. It was found that the temperature could reach the flashover temperature of 600°C in some cases, and the heat release rate could be as high as 1.4 MW. The sprinkler and water mist system were shown to be effective in extinguishing kitchen fires but less extinguishing time was required in using the sprinkler system.; Experimental studies were carried out for studying thermal sensitivity of fusible links installed in hotel guestrooms. Two groups of experiments were carried out to examine the thermal response of fusible links with heated wind tunnel. The first group of experiments involved testing 50 fusible links following common standards used in USA, i.e., Underwriters' Laboratories 33 on heat responsive links at constant temperature and air speed. All the fusible links fulfilled the operating time as recommended. The second group of experiments involved the testing of fusible links at various temperatures and air speeds. Recording the operating time of the fusible links would give the response time index by plotting a suitable graph. |
