Impact of interior insulation on the safety of people in case of fire - Case study of an office building

• Main Authors: Fellaji, Oumaima, Romani, Zaid, Mahdaoui, Mustapha, Ahachad, Mohammed
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Air conditioning; Building envelopes; Coefficient of variation; Energy requirements; Insulation; Integrated works software; Mathematical analysis; Office buildings; Profitability; Software; Thermal comfort
• ISSN: 0094-243X; 1551-7616
• DOI: 10.1063/5.0172253

The use of insulation in building envelopes is a recurring solution to improve thermal comfort in indoor climatic conditions. Indeed, these improvements allow, on the one hand, to decrease the annual building energy needs and, on the other hand, to increase the level of comfort of workers, which influences their profitability and subsequently. However, this insulation can increase the danger to workers in the event of a fire. In this work, we present the energy benefits of the use of interior insulation using the Moroccan Thermal Construction Regulation (RTCM) using TRNSYS software of an office building located in Tangier. Then, we study the impact of interior insulation on the life of workers in the event of a fire by analyzing the variation in temperature and the extinction coefficient as a function of time within the building using FDS software. The results of the study show that the integration of envelope insulation as an energy efficient solution has reduced energy requirements for heating and air conditioning but the numerical simulations of evacuation and fire proved that the critical values of the studied quantities were exceeded from the first moments, putting workers’ lives in danger.