Analysis and Flame Retarding Design of Combustibles in Nanjing Typical Historical Buildings

Abstract Historical buildings are non-renewable cultural resources with important historical, artistic and scientific values. Most of Chinese historical architectural structures are built by combustible wooden components like beams, columns, brackets and floors, and always contain flammable ornaments like paper articles, textiles and plastic products inside. Such buildings are easily endangered by fires. Field investigations were conducted on four typical Nanjing historical buildings - ChaoTian Palace, GanXi Former Residence, JiMing Temple and JingJue Temple. The status and distributions of internal combustibles like wooden, fabric, plastic, paint and daily-used articles were counted, surrounding environments were explored and thus the potential fire hazards were evaluated. For the safe conservation of historical buildings, accessible flame retarding systems (flame retardants and processings) were presented, measures to reduce fire loads were also given.