Fire-Risk Calculations in Assessing the Fire Safety of Storehouses at Manufacturing Enterprises

The fire safety requirements in Federal law [1] and standards [2, 3] take the form of generalized lists of rules ensuring an optimal level of safety. At manufacturing enterprises, which employ a range of technological processes and transform a great variety of materials, the generality of the lists may result in excessive or, alternatively, inadequate measures in specific circumstances. In both cases, the potential outcome is unacceptable: either unjustified expenditures on fire safety; or considerable loss of materials or human life in a fire. Accordingly, fire safety is a fundamental consideration in the design and construction of manufacturing enterprises. Storehouses are of particular interest: they are of considerable area and contain numerous combustible materials, but few employees are present. That must be taken into account in calculations of the fire risk. In the present work, the standard approach is applied to a storehouse built according to government-approved design documents at a manufacturing plant for machine tools in Mordovia. This is a continuation of research at other industrial sites in Mordovia [4, 5]; those sites differed in purpose, in production technology, and in the materials employed. In one case, the required level of fire safety was confirmed by fire-risk calculations [4]. The specific features of the other site were such that special technical specifications were developed for the project before the level of fire safety was confirmed by fire-risk calculations [5]. Expansion of the functions of these facilities required further research.