Toxic Gases from Fires
While many human lives have been lost during fires, it has been indicated that the main cause has probably been due to the generation of poisonous gases from burning polymers such as new building materials, synthetic fibers, plastics, and the like as well as the air tightness of building construction. Fire experiments have been conducted using a real residential house for burning from the actual perspective in order to elucidate these causes jointly with medical scientists.
Flames coming out of the burning room a real size fire experiment
Fire Retardant Efficiency
Non-combustible fire retardant products have been used for the purpose of preventing fires. The Institute has studied methods of gradually evaluating the fire retardant efficiency of these products depending on the degree of non-combustibility so that products with fire retardant efficiencies may be selected which meet in-tended uses.
Flammability test apparatus for fire resistant textiles
Fires in Special Purpose Spaces
A wide variety of underground spaces accompanying high levels G land use in urban areas as well a large spaces in buildings referred to a atrium have been appearing. The Institute comes to understand the behavior of fires such as burning rate, velocity profile of plume, smoke and gas propagation, and the like in such special spaces by conducting experiment using reduced scale models and the] studying predictions of fire behavior on an actual scale. Good use of these results have been made for fire safety: techniques such as securing the safety: of human lives, fire fighting, etc. whenever a fire breaks out.
Model tunnel
Statistical Analysis of Fires
The Institute has been analyzing the risk of fire and patterns of fires based on statistical analysis of nationwide survey data regarding the causes of fires and deaths by fires. The Institute has also compares and analyzes these statistics with those of other major countries in the world. Differences and characteristics are then clarified by country while at the same time searching for main reasons of differences.