STRUCTURAL FIRE PROTECTION IN JAPAN
Introduction
As buildings become larger, taller and more complicated, well-grounded principles for a design system for building fire safety are required, in which various countermeasures against fires are combined effectively. In Japan, however, existing fire regula- tions are the specification type, so there are many problems, such as the great expense necessary for installing many countermeasures against fires. Even if fire prevention installation are equipped sufficiently, required fire resistance is not reduced.
With the above in mind, a research project, "Development of Design System for Building Fire Safety", was initiated in April, 1982 as a five year project sponsored by the Ministry of Construc- tion. This project had the cooperation of people from many differ- ent areas, and was concluded in 1987. As a result of this project, new design regulations for structural fire protection were proposed, based on well-grounded principles established by analytical method.
procedure for fire resistance of buildings in Japan, and give an outline of the new design regulations for sIn this paper, we will explain the traditional design tructural fire protection and an example of design based on these regulations.
Traditional design procedure
At present, the fire resistance of a building is established by certification of the required performance according to the number of stories of the building and building elements by standard fire resistance tests, similar to many other countries.