Tentative Program of Fire Tests at Aultsville

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Technical Note (National Research Council of Canada. Division of Building Research), 1957-07-01

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Tentative Program of Fire Tests at Aultsville Williams-Leir, G.

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DIVISION OF BUILDING RESEARCH

NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL OF CANADA

, ,

TEe 1HIN II <CAlL

NOTlE

No,':"

231

NOT FOR PUBLICATION

PREPARED BY G. Williams-Leir PREPARED FOR Discussion,

CHECKED BY

FOR INTERNAL USE APPROVED BY N.B.H.

ｾ July

1957

SUBJECT Tentative Program of Fire Tests at Aultsville

The construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway necessi-tates the inundation of a large area including several small towns and Villages. The Hydro Electric Power Commission of Ontario (REPC) is responsible for rehabilitation, which in-cludes arranging to move some of the buildings and buying the remainder for demolition. By arrangement between the HEPC and

the Civil 'Defence Section of Defence Research Board, certain buildings may be made available for experiments. The Fire Sec-tion of the Division of Building Research, NaSec-tional Research Council, has been offered the chance to do fire tests on some of these bUildings. This note is to describe one of the sug-gested programs of tests.

The first meeting with the Civil Defence Section was on 27 December

1956

and the first reconnaissance to the area on

9

January

1957.

The village of Aultsville was then selected as the most suitable for fire tests. There has been a series of ｲ･｣ｯｾｾ｡ｩｳｳ｡ｮ｣･ｳ since. On 11 February 1957 the Fire Section party met the local representatives of HEPC and saw a few in-teriors. On the third trip, 27 February, each of the 80 avail-able buildings was photographed from the front in a standard-ized manner, and certain of these were similarly photographed from the side on

13

March. It was clear that the most common size of house was two-storey, 600 to 900 square feet per anrey, exclusive of sheds etc.

since: This size was tentatively selected for the tests, a) it was plentiful

b) the fire should not be too hard to control. Measurements of certain houses were made on

13

and 20 March and

4

July. A sixth trip had been made on 22 May to conduct a party from Building Design and Building Code Sec-tions. Thus, on 8 July rough plans were availabled eight houses and the interior lining materials had been recorded for these and for some others.

•

There has been much discussion on what should be the 2 -object of the tests. Starting from a suggested number of tests,

six, can useful information be obtained on one or more topics? This scale is governed not by shortage of houses but by limit-ations of equipment for observlimit-ations, and above all, of skilled men's time.

Experience has shown that the results of fire tests are variable. This is true even when all the parameters which appear to be relevant have been carefUlly controlled, as they cannot be in tests on houses·· already built and all different. Where large numbers of experiments can be done, this situation can be rectified by proper use of statistics. Where, as here, a small number only of tests can be done, a kind of uncertainty principle governs: one can get very unreliable information

about a number of topiCS or one can get rather better confidence in the information gained on a very few topics.

For instance, if A, Band C are three factors which may influence the merit of a construction as regards fire sa-fety, eXpressed in terms of an index such as, for instance, the estimated time ｡ｾｬ｡｢ｬ･ for escape from the building after ignition, one may measure the index for six cases:

,

With A Without A With B Without B With C Without C

Suppose that the mean value of this index when A is present is twice what it is without. The meart value can only be determined by a great number of tests, and in the schedule above only one is provided. If the coefficient of variation of these measurements is say

25%,

which is not unreasonable in the light of experience of model room ｢ｵｲｮｾｯｵｴ experiments, then there is an appreciable probability that the single test will show the index less with A than without 1t: thAt is, the reverse of the truth.

Ii' however one does six tests as f'ollows: With A With A With A Without A vlithout A \'lithout A

then some confidence can be placed in the result as regards the merit of A, though nothing has been learned about Band C.

. 4 .

-3)

Gas Anaiysis - The method of taking samples in evacuated botties for subsequent analysis is thought to be cumbersome. It is planned to measure the oxygen content of the atmosphere magnetically and the car-bon monoxide thermally by selective catalytic oxid-ation. These are the two components of the atmos-phere which govern the survival of life. Each gas would be measured on a separate indicator and read-ings would be taken manually at :frequent intervals.

An important detail is that the critical range of carbon monoxide concentration is higher than the range for which the indicator can be used directly. Thus it will be necessary to dilute the sampled gas, and to do this quanti-tatively.

Acknowledgement

It will be noted that the method proposed is closely modelled ｵｾｯｮ that used by the Joint Fire Research Organiza-tion (U.K.) in their experiments upon two specially-built houses in December

1949.