Every system that affects fire safety in a building has a chance to fulfill its function only if its actuating component operates correctly in an emergency situation. This is likely why the vast majority of actuating elements that significantly impact safety belong to a group of products subject to special supervision and require a strictly defined process for market placement and approval for use.

A very important aspect of fire safety is ensuring effective evacuation from a building or a danger zone. Evacuation requirements are specified in the Regulation of the Minister of Infrastructure on the technical conditions to be met by buildings and their location. During the design process, especially for buildings intended for large numbers of occupants, advanced mathematical models are used. All these measures are necessary and undoubtedly have a positive impact on safety. However, it is worth noting that even the best-designed evacuation system will fail if its actuating element does not perform properly. In evacuation systems, this element is the door, which either separates a specific zone or serves as an exit from the building.

Doors are construction products placed on the market based on the relevant reference document applicable to a given door type. Depending on the opening method, evacuation doors can be divided into hinged evacuation doors and sliding evacuation doors.

Hinged Evacuation Doors

Hinged evacuation doors may be placed on the market based on the following standards:

  • External doors without fire resistance and/or smoke control properties: PN-EN 14351-1
  • Internal doors without fire resistance and/or smoke control properties: PN-EN 14351-2

It should be noted that for doors with additional fire resistance or smoke control properties, these characteristics are declared in accordance with PN-EN 16034.

PN-EN 14351-1 is a harmonized standard, meaning that products covered by it must bear the CE marking. PN-EN 14351-2 is not harmonized but is recognized as a national standard in Poland; therefore, products covered by it should bear the B construction mark.

Release Capability

The parameter that distinguishes evacuation doors from standard doors is the characteristic defined as release capability.

To meet this requirement, at least two issues must be considered:

  1. The hardware used must be intended for evacuation doors and comply with:
    • PN-EN 179,
    • PN-EN 1125,
    • and for electronically controlled exits, PN-EN 13637.

  2. The entire door assembly, including:

    • leaf dimensions,
    • locking devices,
    • operating elements,
    • hinges,

    must ensure free and unobstructed opening of the door leaf, or both leaves in the case of double-leaf doors.

Meeting the requirement for free and unobstructed opening creates many challenges for door manufacturers, particularly for doors manufactured to custom dimensions. In the case of double-leaf profile doors, selecting the appropriate hardware is not straightforward, and even experienced manufacturers encounter difficulties.

A manufacturer can easily fall into the trap of producing doors fitted with evacuation hardware while the overall construction still fails to meet the release capability requirement. For this reason, declaring this characteristic requires the manufacturer to hold the appropriate certification. Evacuation doors are covered by System 1 of Assessment and Verification of Constancy of Performance (AVCP).

This issue is important for everyone involved in the process—from building designers and door manufacturers to inspection authorities. While it may be unreasonable to expect building inspectors to know every detailed requirement regarding door hardware, they should be aware that evacuation doors, just like fire-resistant doors, are products whose manufacture requires appropriate certification.

What Is Release Capability?

To explain this, it is useful to examine the complex case of double-leaf profile doors.

Such doors must allow release and simultaneous free opening of both leaves regardless of whether the active or inactive leaf is activated first. This requirement is justified because, in an emergency, people evacuating a danger zone will follow evacuation signs to the exit and may not be able to distinguish between the active and inactive leaf.

Due to door leaf kinematics, initiating opening from the inactive leaf is the most challenging scenario.

When analyzing release capability, three critical points in the leaf movement must be examined. Failure at any of these points may result in collision and blockage of the doors.

1. Leaf Jamming

The first critical area is a collision between the profiles of the active and inactive leaves.

This occurs in the vast majority of door profile systems available on the market. The situation can be slightly improved when manufacturers use special profile systems designed for evacuation doors, featuring a wider rebate gap.

The use of hinges whose pivot axis is located as close as possible to the plane of the door leaf also improves performance.

However, our experience shows that only the use of an active leaf ejector fully resolves this issue. Therefore, all systeQ hardware sets intended for inactive leaves are equipped with an ejector.

In addition, the ejector used by us has an adjustable operating arm, allowing optimization of leaf movement.

It should be noted that ejectors cannot be used together with surface-mounted panic hardware. Consequently, in external profile door systems, their use is practically limited to single-leaf doors.

2. Collision Between Lock Faceplates

Doors may become blocked when locking components from the active and inactive leaves collide.

The problem is particularly challenging in fire-resistant door profiles because these have a so-called narrow hardware gap, meaning limited space between profiles for lock installation.

The situation worsens when locks with U-shaped faceplates are used.

For this reason, all locking devices in the systeQ S-15 single-point lock system are based on flat strike plates with a thickness of 3 mm.

Collisions can also be avoided by:

  • using wider door leaves,
  • or changing the hinge type.

3. Obstruction Between Operating Devices

This is the most dangerous area because improperly selected panic bars can completely prevent the doors from opening, even when evacuation locks are installed.

This occurs when the opening inactive leaf collides with the panic bar body installed on the active leaf.

There are two possible solutions:

Use Deeper Locks

This increases the distance between the panic bars installed on both leaves.

In practice, however, this is often impossible because many door profiles are too narrow to accommodate deeper locks.

Use Panic Bars with a More Suitable Shape

Selecting panic bars with a geometry better suited to the kinematics of the door leaves can eliminate the problem.

Conclusion

Proper configuration of double-leaf evacuation door hardware is not a trivial matter and requires considerable expertise from the door designer.

Only by checking all potential collision points described above can one ensure that free and unobstructed door opening is possible.

We invite you to watch an animation illustrating door leaf opening kinematics:
https://youtu.be/EiIi0DAi1WI

Recognizing the complexity of this issue, together with accredited testing laboratories, we have prepared Release Capability Reports for our customers.

These reports provide valuable information on how evacuation doors should be configured to achieve release capability.

A report defines the door construction, including:

  • the selected profile series,
  • single-point evacuation locks (systeQ-S),
  • multipoint evacuation locks (systeQ-M),
  • operating devices such as emergency exit handles (PN-EN 179),
  • panic exit devices (PN-EN 1125),
  • hinges,
  • additional components such as electric strikes.

Furthermore, the reports constitute a preliminary type test, enabling door manufacturers to apply for certification for the production of evacuation doors.

To simplify the selection of appropriate door hardware, you can also use our free configurator available at www.esco24.pl.

The configurator is based on the results of release capability reports and enables users to quickly assess the feasibility of manufacturing evacuation doors and to select the correct configuration.

#evacuation #smokeventdoors #releasecapability #doorcertification #accesscontrol #evacuationdooraccesscontrol #smokeventactuator #panicdoors #evacuationdoorhardware #escoPolska #esco #doorautomation