Fire and collapse, Faculty of Architecture building, Delft University of Technology: Data collection and preliminary analyses

On the morning of May 13, 2008, a fire that started in a coffee vending machine on the 6th floor of the 13-story Faculty of Architecture Building at the Delft University of Technology (TUD), Delft, the Netherlands, quickly developed into an extreme loading event. Although all building occupants evacuated safely, the rapid fire spread severely impacted fire department operations, allowing the fire to burn uncontrolled for several hours, eventually resulting in the structural collapse of a major portion of the building. With the fire continuing to burn after collapse, damage was ultimately significant enough that the building had to be demolished. Collecting and archiving data from this fire is extremely important because structural collapse of high-rise buildings due to fire has historically been quite rare. There are several reasons for this, from the overall infrequency of fire ignition in high-rise buildings, to the combination of structural fire resistance of the frame, fire-rated compartment barriers, automatic fire suppression systems, and fire department suppression activities generally associated with the fire protection strategy for high-rise buildings. This event offers a unique opportunity to study the performance of a code-compliant high-rise building in a major fire wherein the outcome was different than might typically be expected. In order to facilitate analyses of this event, researchers in the United States, under a Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER) from the National Science Foundation (NSF award 0840601), teamed up with researchers from TNO and Efectis in the Netherlands, along with Prof. Kees van Weeren of the TUD Faculty of Architecture, to collect data on the fire and collapse. A summary of data collected and outcomes of preliminary analyses are presented.