More businesses are beginning to require the use of electric vehicles to help better align with the sustainable goals. However, this can cause serious challenges for facilities managers as alternative fuel vehicles are designed with larger quantities of combustible materials, posing a fire risk for parking garages and vehicle carriers. The Fire Protection Research Foundation – the research affiliate of the The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) - has moved forward with the third part of a three-phase project that addresses sprinkler protection guidance for parking structures. The guidance will provide information on the fire safety design of parking garages or other facilities where electric vehicles will be parked.
Characterizing EV Hazards in Parking Structures to Inform Fire Safety Design Guidance: Full-Scale Testing will involve characterizing the overall hazard of modern vehicles and electric vehicles, determining the overall impact of sprinkler protection on hazard mitigation through full-scale fire and sprinkler testing. The program will determine the optimal sprinkler design density to control vehicles fires and prevent spread in standard parking garages.
The program will include three baseline unsprinklered calorimetry tests to characterize the hazards of EVs followed by six tests in a mockup open parking garage with use of sprinkler densities aligned with current standards requirements and industry practice, and one test of a two-car stacker arrangement with sprinkler protection. The experiments aim to provide data on heat fluxes and fire spread in parking structures, informing fire protection practices and sprinkler design standards by providing data on what hazard classification is appropriate for such vehicles in a parking garage.
Vehicle fires in parking structures that turn into large-scale incidents are fairly rare, but recent fires that occurred in the UK resulted in severe structural damage, demonstrating how fast these losses can occur.
Mackenna Moralez is the associate editor of the facilities market.
