Aspects of fires for factories in Hong Kong

The fire risk in factories in Hong Kong is studied in this article. Local regulations, existing designs for fire safety, and fire experience for factories are discussed. Fire loads in forty-seven factories of different sizes were surveyed and reported. The fire equivalent duration period which is related to surveyed fire load density is calculated. Since smoke is a key aspect of fire safety, the time required to fill a factory with smoke was studied. The NBTC one-room hot layer model of FIRECALC developed at the Division of Building, Construction and Engineering, CSIRO, Australia was used to study the fire environment. Correlation relationships between the equivalent duration period and the predicted maximum hot gas temperature and the corresponding smoke layer interface height were derived from fire simulations performed in those forty-seven factories.