Special Issue "Fire Safety in Green and Sustainable Buildings"

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 August 2022.

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Cheuk Lun Chow
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Interests: green and sustainable buildings; fire safety
Prof. Dr. Koen Steemers
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture and History of Art, University of Cambridge, 1-5 Scroope Terrace, Cambridge, CB2 1PX, UK
Interests: environmental performance of buildings and cities, with a particular interest in human health, perception and behavior
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Green and sustainable buildings are promoted actively all over the world. The aims are to protect the environment, use less energy through natural ventilation provisions and daylight utilization, develop better waste management, and take water conservation into account. Areas involved are architectural features including building construction element; electrical and mechanical systems to give a comfortable environment, but where the system would use energy, directly or indirectly; and management including energy management, environmental management, and fire safety management.

However, there are many conflicting fire safety requirements for environmentally friendly designs for green and sustainable buildings. For example, compartmentation would affect natural ventilation provision. Driving forces due to wind action and stack effect might give air flow in carrying smoke particulates generated from the fire room to the adjacent area. New ventilation design without careful consideration of safety issues might lead to faster development of fire or smoke spreading. Using flammable clean refrigerant may lead to explosions.

Consequently, there are delays to or even rejection of green or sustainable building projects. Performance-based design has to be applied to determine fire safe provisions for green buildings. This Special Issue is proposed to report the potential conflicts between fire safety and environmental green architectural design, engineering systems, and environmental management to have fire safety in a complementary role, and to propose solutions.

Both research and review papers on fire dynamics and materials, passive building construction, active fire protection systems, fire safety management, fire investigation, and fire services for green and sustainable buildings are invited. Performance-based design for projects failing to comply with fire regulations with fire models and fire hazard assessment is welcome.

The topics include:

  1. Scientific aspects of fire and explosion hazards associated with green buildings and environmental management systems;
  2. Utilization of numerical simulation, physical experiments, and field surveys to provide fire-safe design for green and sustainable buildings;
  3. Architectural and building design, electrical and mechanical systems, and building management for green and sustainable buildings;
  4. Updates of fire safety standards/regulations for green buildings;
  5. Case studies on fire hazards of green and sustainable buildings projects.

Dr. Cheuk Lun Chow
Prof. Dr. Koen Steemers
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • fire
  • explosion
  • green
  • sustainable buildings

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

Article
Sustainable Smoke Extraction System for Atrium: A Numerical Study
Sustainability 2021, 13(13), 7406; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13137406 - 01 Jul 2021
Viewed by 530
Abstract
Smoke extraction systems, either static with natural ventilation, or dynamic with mechanical ventilation are required to keep smoke layer at high levels in many tall atria. It is observed that a design fire with high heat release rate (HRR) is commonly used for [...] Read more.
Smoke extraction systems, either static with natural ventilation, or dynamic with mechanical ventilation are required to keep smoke layer at high levels in many tall atria. It is observed that a design fire with high heat release rate (HRR) is commonly used for designing natural vents, but a low HRR is used for mechanical ventilation system. This will not produce a sustainable environment. There are no internationally agreed on design guides to determine the HRR in the design fire for different extraction systems and scenarios. This issue will be studied using a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)-based software, the Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) version 6.7.1. Simulations on natural smoke filling, static and dynamic smoke extractions were carried out in a big example atrium. CFD-FDS predictions were compared with previous full-scale burning tests. Results confirmed that static smoke extraction is a good option for big fires, and a dynamic system is best for small fires. A sustainable new hybrid design combining the advantages of static and dynamic systems is proposed, which could result in a lower smoke temperature and higher smoke layer interface height, indicating a better extraction design. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fire Safety in Green and Sustainable Buildings)
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