Design and Development of a Hybrid Fire and Heat Detector Through Narrowing of Alternatives

Fire safety is considered of paramount importance in high civil structures and various industries from aerospace to manufacturing of utilities. International standards make it mandatory for all companies for installation of fire and heat sensors in their premises and work places from commercial to domestic use building. These sensors are to be installed in large numbers and increase cost based on unit prices of components as well as complex networks. Fire and heating alarm systems are abundantly available in the market as standalone systems. Few may have both features of detecting heat and fire in the same product but the literature on those is very limited. This research was carried out to review the existing similar products in the market as well as design and develop a unique product with both features in the same unit. An exhaustive product design and development process was followed to arrive at concept design alternatives. Features of these alternatives were compared against a set criteria based on customer requirements. A criteria based on international standards and products available in market was made to arrive at required technical specifications of alternatives. Forced choice procedure was used to find weightage of each criteria element. A total of 10 design alternatives were investigated and analyzed against the selected criteria. Finally best two were selected for further studies. A virtual 3D geometric model of the top rank alternative was developed along with anticipated bill of materials. It was expected that making a hybrid of both fire and heat alarm in one unit will substantially reduce the cost of its installation for industrial, commercial and domestic applications. It will also increase safety for buildings and structure through an early warning because of its integration Wi-Fi warning systems.