A FIRE PROTECTION AND LIFE SAFETY ANALYSIS OF AN OUPATIENT HEALTHCARE SYSTEM BUILDING

The subject building of the report is an outpatient healthcare system building that is a two stories in height and 184,670 SF building. This building offers primary, specialty, and mental health outpatient care to patients throughout its state of location. The facility is a mixed occupancy building with business as the primary occupancy, a surgery suite that classifies as an ambulatory health care occupancy, and assembly uses in the conference rooms, kitchen, and canteen. The Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ) has adopted the National Fire Codes (NFC) published by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), and throughout this report, the life safety features of the building are assessed against the requirements of Life Safety Code, NFPA 101. The facility is fully sprinklered, with sprinklers appearing to be provided in all areas. There is also an analog addressable fire alarm system that is electrically supervised by a central station monitoring service. Per NFPA 220, Standard on Types of Building Construction, Table 4.1.1 Fire Resistance Ratings for Type I through Type V Construction (hour), this facility appears to be constructed in accordance with the requirements of a Construction Type II (000) rating. The NFPA Type II (000) rating corresponds to an IBC Construction Type IIB. In the following analysis, the facility was evaluated from both prescriptive and performance based design perspectives. The total occupant load for the facility was calculated as 3390 persons in accordance with NFPA 101 Chapter 7. Most spaces were determined to have adequate exit capacity. However, the canteen only has one valid exit and does not meet the required two exits per NFPA 101 for assembly occupancies. All other floors and spaces were determined to have adequate number of exits, separation of exits, and measured travel distances as required by NFPA 101. Code discrepancies were also discovered for fire detection and notification. A discrepancy was discovered between the mounting heights of manual pull stations required by NFPA 72 and those of the fire alarm and detection shop drawings. Pull station placement should be verified. Notification devices in the mechanical penthouses appear to be undersized from a visual notification perspective. Further, audible notification devices in these mechanical penthouses may also be undersized. Field verification of the existing ambient sound levels should be performed. The facility is fully sprinklered, with sprinklers appearing to be provided in all areas. Most of the facility is protected by an automatic wet sprinkler suppression system. There is a small dry sprinkler system located at the loading dock, where the system is subject to freezing conditions. The system appears to have been designed per the AHJ’s Fire Protection Design Manual and NFPA 13-2003. The flow and pressure at the base of the riser (BOR) required to meet the sprinkler system demand is 273.3 gpm and 67.6 psi. The hose stream allowance was previously determined to be 250 gpm. Therefore, the total system demand is 523 gpm at 67.6 PSI. This value exceeds the available water supply of a static pressure of 62 psi, a residual pressure of 20 psi, and 1940 gallons of flow. A computer based analysis should be performed to refine the understanding of the complex hydraulics at the facility. The first floor occupant load was calculated to be 839 persons. Using the hydraulic approximation, the egress time for the first floor was evaluated. If all of the 839 occupants on the first floor start evacuation at the same time, the persons on the first floor will require approximately 1.23 minutes to pass through the exit. The total minimum evacuation time for the 839 persons located on floor 1 is estimated at 5.1 minutes. The second floor occupant load was calculated to be 1210 persons. The second floor exit capacity was calculated to be 1231 persons, which just exceeds the second floor occupant load of 1210 persons. The total minimum evacuation time for the 1231 persons located on floor 2 is estimated at 8.2 minutes. The assumptions used in hydraulic approximation model all tend to optimize egress times and therefore will tend to underestimate actual egress times. The occupant characteristics of these user groups within the facility’s building population were reviewed, and the key characteristics of the groups were evaluated. Since the purpose of this outpatient clinic is to provide medical care to patients, a conservative approach is necessary to protect occupants that may have preexisting medical conditions. Employees regularly participate in fire drills and can typically be expected to efficiently respond to the fire alarm system and start evacuating. However, careful consideration of pre-movement times is especially important with employees as they can be prone to social influence, and procedural requirements. Patients are the most likely to have an issue perceiving an alarm, interpreting the alarm, and deciding on a course of action. Three different design fires were evaluated for this facility. Design Fire #1 investigates the impact of large fuel load of palletized computer equipment on egress in a first floor corridor. Egress is expected to be highly compromised. This design fire is similar to NFPA 101 5.5.3.2 Design Fire Scenario 2 which has the characteristics of an ultrafast developing fire, in the primary means of egress. Design Fire #2 investigates the impact of a Christmas Tree in the building’s main atrium. This fire offers the opportunity to evaluate the impact of a real life fuel load on one of the primary egress paths. This design fire is similar to NFPA 101 5.5.3.1 Design Fire Scenario 1 and is an occupancy specific fire representative of a typical fire for the occupancy. Design Fire #3 evaluates the impact of a large fuel load of furniture in a storage room that is adjacent to the facilities 6 combinable conference rooms. The worst-case scenario for this space is the potential for migration into the adjacent hallway and affecting egress for the nearby conference rooms. This design fire is similar to NFPA 101 5.5.3.3 Design Fire Scenario 3 which includes a fire that starts in a normally unoccupied room, potentially endangering a large number of occupants in a large room or other area. Performance criteria for tenability was investigated, and reference values were proposed. The selected tenability criteria include 13 m for visibility, an FED of 1 for Carbon Monoxide, 60 °C for exposure temperature, and 1.7 kW·m-2 for radiant heat exposure. Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) was used to model Design Fire #1, which presented an abnormally large fuel load of computer equipment in a hallway outside of the Supply Chain Management office. This fire provides an ultrafast developing fire, in the primary means of egress, and addresses a concern regarding a reduction in the number of available means of egress. Visibility is the first tenability criteria to be reached in a time frame of 92 seconds, followed by exposure temperature at 105 seconds. The reality of this ultrafast fire is that egress for the Supply Chain Management Office will be severely compromised, and may not provide ample time for the occupants of the Supply Chain Management Office to escape. Further modeling could be performed with additional information on the building\u27s construction materials, ventilation systems, and fire suppression systems. The response of the fire suppression system, and its effectiveness on the fuel load should be evaluated and could potentially help egress from the Supply Chain Management Office. Since the calculated Required Safe Egress Time (RSET) is calculated 12.72 minutes, and the Available Safe Egress Time (ASET) is 92 seconds, egress for the Supply Chain Management Office can be expected to be compromised. Based on the results of modeling Design Fire #1, it is recommended to relocate the commodity to a warehouse. The surveyed fuel load is inappropriate for an exit corridor in a Business Occupancy

Energy Storage as Enabling Technology for Smart Grid

Awareness about human impact on mighty climatic changes is radically changing our concept of energy. The thoughtless use of energy slowly leaves our habits and good use of energy is certain the way of a better future. CO2 emission reduction and carbon fossil fuel limitation are the main targets of governmental actions: this is possible thanks to technology improvement as efficient generation from renewable sources and good management of the electricity network. In recent years distributed generation, also of small size, grew up causing new management problems, indeed production from renewable energy sources (RES) is intermittent and unprogrammable. Energy storage systems can be a solution to these problems and pave the way to completely active users, grid parity and smart grid, moreover can be an useful tool to increase electricity access in rural areas. Research on energy storage is intrinsically a multidisciplinary field: storage types, power stages, technologies, topologies, weather, forecast, control algorithms, regulatory, safety and business cases to mention the most importants. In the present work is described the whole design of an energy storage system. First chapters are dedicated to a description of energy storage context, chapters 1 and 2; indeed, it is a matter of fact that in the last years, energy storage became more and more interesting from explicit mention as a tool against climatic changes to first options on the market. The general approach was the realization of a modular energy storage system for residential application, hardware and software design steps are deeply described in chapters 3 and 4. Simulations and tests on the prototype are reported in chapter 5. Finally conclusion and future works are given. At the end of the document some appendices are included to cover specific aspects touched during the work thesis

Design of Renewable Energy Systems for ECUSTA's University Campus in Addis Ababa

In this thesis, three installations powered by renewable energy sources are proposed for the Campus of the Ethiopian Catholic University St Thomas Aquinas. A forced circulation solar thermal system is designed to produce hot water for the showers of the dormitory. A photovoltaic system with electrochemical storage is designed, to protect from power outages the sensible equipment of ISPEMA Medical Center. A natural circulation solar thermal system is designedope

Fire and Life Safety Evaluation of an Assisted Living and Memory Care Center

This culminating project has been submitted as part of the graduate program in Fire Protection Engineering at Cal Poly. It documents an Assisted Living and Memory Care Center’s compliance with applicable fire safety prescriptions contained in the 2019 California Building and Fire Codes (CBC and CFC). Performance-based methods incorporating deterministic design fires were then used to verify that the final building design and operating procedures met the life safety needs of its unique occupants. The building under analysis was a 45,000 sq. ft, two-story, 58-bed residential care facility for the elderly. Occupants were all 60 years or older without acute medical conditions but with potential mild to severe mobility, sensory, and cognitive impairments. The fire- resistance-rated light-frame wood structure, its compartmentalized interior layout, and its active fire protection systems were found to satisfy the code provisions adopted by the local authority having jurisdiction. These included plentiful egress and exit capacity, localized fire and smoke containment, early smoke detection, audible and visual notification at levels appropriate to the occupants, and complete quick-response sprinkler coverage for life and property protection. The priorities of the performance-based analysis were to check the adequacy of these code-compliant fire protection features, as well as to support housing accessibility and to inform staff training. These required realistic fire models to verify available safe egress times (ASETs), which were shorter for these residents than the general population due to their lower tolerances for heat and smoke exposure. Design fires took guidance from NFPA 101 Life Safety Code and the author’s research on the history of fatal care home fires. All fires were placed in residential wings using heat release data from calorimetry tests of residential furniture and mixed natural/ synthetic hydrocarbon contents in staff supply closets. Initial growth rates were between fast (0.0469 kW/s2) and ultrafast (0.1876 kW/s2), with peak heat release rates and embodied energies appropriate to the fuel packages but ultimately determined by ventilation conditions. Model results supported the existing building design but showed that additional fuel control, compartmentation, detection/ notification, and automatic suppression would strengthen care staff’s response to and management of fires. Specifically, all rooms that communicate with residential corridors should have smoke detection and be fitted with door self-closers, following the findings of Performance Design Fires ‘B’ and ‘C.’ Where clients are housed also impacts their fire safety, so their facility intake forms/ health assessments should be used to guide placement— per Performance Design Fire ‘A,’ Assisted Living residents with the greatest cognitive, sensory, and locomotion disabilities should be housed closest to the lobby to receive prompt aid and minimize burns and smoke inhalation. These vulnerabilities also mean that sprinkler protection should be designed following the more rigorous commercial NFPA 13 standard as opposed to low- rise residential NFPA 13R, which was demonstrated in Performance Design Fire ‘D.’ Performance Design Fire ‘A’ was a nighttime living room furniture fire typical of all 40 Assisted Living dwellings. The occupant was assumed to be sleeping in the bedroom and not intimate with ignition; they were also capable of self-evacuation. Their required safe egress time (RSET) included a delay in waking to their low-frequency smoke alarm and traversing their unit to the corridor door, which totaled two minutes. At this time, the visibility through smoke was well below what would normally be accepted for design. The gasses at six feet above finished floor in the egress path were already too hot to move through (120°C), so the evacuee had to stoop, crouch, or even crawl, depending on the effectiveness of the sprinkler suppression. Since the sprinkler did temper heat, the asphyxiant fractional effective dose for incapacitation (FEDtot = 0.1) became the limiting tenability criteria; an especially respiratory-sensitive evacuee who took longer to find their door would have been incapacitated at two and a half minutes, but staff was expected to intervene by then. The slim margin for human error suggests that this scenario would benefit from a probabilistic assessment that includes ignition and suppression. A deterministic solution would be to regulate the flame spread and heat release of the furniture that residents bring in or are provided with. In scenarios ‘B’ and ‘C,’ a mixed cellulose/ plastics design fire was placed in staff supply closets with doors open to the residential hallways in the Assisted Living and Memory Care wings. The door in Performance Design Fire ‘B’ was self-closing, so wedging it open represented an n = 1 managerial failure; the closet sprinkler was operational. The nighttime RSET of Assisted Living residents to reach an adjacent smoke compartment was three to four minutes, depending on their disability. The ASET was the time for the smoke layer to descend to six feet in the corridor, which was the only evacuation route. This occurred by a minute and a half for 44% of the dwelling units along the hallway, which was the earliest staff was expected to arrive and close the fire room door. Since visibility at the staff entrance to the corridor was below two meters, and required crouching or crawling to access the room, closing the fire room door was not a certainty. This scenario necessitated partial or full defend-in-place in the Assisted Living wing. A similar result was found for the Memory Care wing in Performance Design Fire ‘C.’ A faulty sprinkler was an n = 1 device failure in this scenario because the closet door was not required to be self-closing. Occupants with dementia/ MNCD were assumed to be incapable of self-evacuation, and an RSET was not calculated for full staff evacuation of the wing, but it would have been much longer than the minute and a half ASET it took for smoke to descend to six feet in most of the corridor. Performance Design Fire ‘D’ looked at ignition within a Memory Care dwelling and NFPA 13’s requirement for sprinklers in clothes closets, which goes beyond NFPA 13R. This model also assumed an n = 1 device failure of the sprinkler. In contrast with Design Fire ‘A,’ the RSET was the time it took for an attendant to rescue the fire room occupant. This was just over a minute; since the fire was shielded from the main room sprinkler by the closet door, the fire burned uncontrolled, and the heat became intolerable overhead (200°C) after a minute and a half. This slim margin for attendant error echoes the conclusions of Design Fire ‘A.’ A summary of ASETs versus RSETs and additional observations can be found in Chapter 11. Facility operator responsibilities, including fuel control, housekeeping, fire protection systems maintenance, and emergency preparedness plans, can be found in the fire safety plan in Chapter 12. These are primarily based on the requirements of the CFC and the findings of this report\u27s prescriptive and performance chapters

PRACTICAL IMPLEMENTATION OF FOUR QUADRANT OPERATION OF THREE PHASE BLDC MOTOR WITH DIFFERENT LOADS

Brush Less Direct Current (BLDC) motors are attaining higher priority in industrial automation, computers, aerospace, military, household appliance and traction applications because of its high efficiency, high power density and low maintenance cost. This makes the control of BLDC motor in all the four quadrants very vital. To control a BLDC machine, it is generally required to measure the speed and position of rotor by using the sensor. Using the measured value of rotor position, each inverter phase acting at precise time will be commutated. This paper deals with the digital control of three phase BLDC motor in all four quadrant operation. The motor is controlled in all the four quadrants without any loss of power; in fact energy is conserved during the regenerative period. This energy is stored in a battery storage system during regenerative period and can be fed back to the inverter mains during shortage of supply from the source. The FPGA controller is implemented which is more advantageous over other conventional controllers as it is computationally intensive, highly parallelizable tasks, best in class accuracy, reliability and maintenance. A PI controller in closed loop configuration is used for speed control. The torque ripple in each quadrant operation is also reduced using a closed loop operation with the aid of a low pass filter. The operation modes of the proposed system are simulated using MATLAB and results are validated

Fire and Life Safety Report Orfalea College of Business

A comprehensive fire and life safety analysis was performed on the Orfalea College of Business. The report covers the prescriptive analysis of the building and the performance-based design analysis. The prescriptive analysis includes assessment of the relevant codes for egress system, water-based suppression system, alarm and detection system, and structural fire protection. The egress analysis under the Life Safety Code 2015 found the building meets the requirements of occupant load to exceed exit capacity, number of exits and its location, travel distances. Four rooms on the second floor that have not met the common path of travel distances limits were discussed in detail in this report. In addition, two locations where exits signs should have been located were investigated in this report. The water-based suppression system was analyzed, and an automatic fire sprinkler system was designed according to NFPA 13. The fire alarm and detection system throughout the building was reviewed. The notification device in Room 300 does not meet required candela rating. The smoke management system analysis indicates door magnetic holder for the exit enclosure on the third floor does not work properly. The analysis of the structural fire protection demonstrates that the building is in accordance to the requirements of the IBC 2015 for Type I-B construction. A performance based analysis of the Orfalea College of Business was performed to evaluate a design fire scenario. The fire scenario was modeled using Fire Dynamic Simulator (FDS), Pyrosim and Pathfinder. The tenability results of the simulation are compared to the established tenability criteria to determine the available safe egress time (ASET) for the scenario. Then, (ASET) is compared to the required safe egress time (RSET). The fire scenario evaluated an upholstered three seat sofa in a break room on the fourth floor. The required safe egress time (RSET) was calculated as 249 seconds and the available safe egress time (ASET) was determined to be 42 seconds when the visibility tenability criterion was exceeded. As part of the evaluation process, there are additional recommendations in the report including exit sings locations on the third floor, obstructions in the corridor on the fourth floor, smoke detection system and notification appliances coverage, and several other recommendations are discussed in more detail in the report

Taylor Place- Fire Life Safety Report

This document is a Fire and Life Safety Report on the Taylor Place Dormitory located in Phoenix, Arizona as part of the Arizona State University (ASU) downtown campus. The building was evaluated on a prescriptive basis based on the current City of Phoenix building codes and further evaluated on using performance based methods from the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) Handbook and National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 101 Life Safety Code®. These building features and systems were evaluated using prescriptive methods: General construction, fire resistive construction and fire resistive separations Occupancy, Life safety features and building egress Smoke management systems and features Fire protection systems, fire sprinkler, suppression systems, fire alarm Emergency and standby power, elevators, communication systems, and lighting A performance-based analysis of the South Tower and Ground Floor Cafeteria and Assembly space using NFPA 101 Life Safety Code® Chapter 5 as a guide. The analysis of the South Tower was based on NFPA 5.5.3.1 and a typical fire for the occupancy accounting for occupants, number and location, room sizes, contents, fuel properties, ventilations, and identifying the location of the item ignited. The analysis of the Ground Floor Cafeteria and Assembly Area was based on NFPA 5.5.3.2 and an ultra-fast fire in the primary means of egress reducing the overall means of egress by two double door exits. These scenarios are analyzed using tenability criteria to determine if with the given the design fire, all occupants can exit safely. Taylor Place generally meets or exceeds the prescriptive requirements for the system described above provided in the building code. Two specific areas were identified requiring further analysis: the corridor and two-story vertical opening separation is not provided in the South Tower per PBC Section 712, and the reduction in the door size of the south egress corridor on the ground floor. Both of these issues were addressed in conjunction with the performance based analysis and found to be acceptable with the current set of performance based recommendations. The performance-based analysis was largely successful. The analysis of the ground floor egress given an ultrafast fire located near the southwest corner of the assembly space found occupants Required Safe Egress Time (RSET) was greater than the Available Safe Egress Time (ASET) meaning all occupants egressed safely. The visibility was lost in the cafeteria which caused the failure of the tenability criteria and the determination of the ASET. The second analysis of the two-story vertical common area in the south tower failed the tenability criteria for visibility during the first two evaluations. It was determined that the two furniture standards as part of the ASU design guidelines varied greatly in fire behavior and smoke production. As a result, the furniture in the common areas meet the recommended requirements, the corridors will not require separation from the common area. As part of the evaluation process, there are additional recommendations in the report including the addition low level egress signage in the corridors to aid egress, a smoke barrier in the entrance lobby, and the reasons are discussed in more detail in the report. Comments and recommendations can be found at the end of each section providing additional detail in specific areas. The end of the report focuses on Commissioning of fire protection and building systems. A team is needed to effectively test all of the fire protection systems in accordance with their performance requirements. Functional tests performed on each system to ensure each systems were installed correctly. For example, stair pressurization systems can rely on several fans to pressurize each stairwell. A functional test will typically quickly reveal problem areas and you may even find a motor running backwards. Valuable information is provided from this stage in the project to identify maintenance requirements and finalize documentation. Fire fighter operation overviews need to be assembled, operation and maintenance manuals need to be created for building staff, and fire safety plans need to be implemented. It is very much a documentation and punch list phase of the project