Fire load in students’ dormitory buildings

This paper presents the results of a survey conducted in China to characterize fire loads in students’ dormitory buildings. The influence of room type, students’ grade and the contribution of different types of combustibles are discussed in detail. The fire load densities of all the surveyed buildings show a normal distribution with the mean value of 537.3MJ/m2, the maximum value of 812MJ/m2, the minimum value of 234MJ/m2, and the standard deviation of 140. Based on the survey results, the fire dynamical theory and the characteristics of building fire, the evaluation methods of the fire duration time and the collapse probability caused by fire are also developed in this paper.